Bush tells troops war on terror will take high-tech weapons, old-fashioned spies

By SANDRA SOBIERAJ
Associated Press Writer

CHARLESTON, S.C. – President Bush told America's next generation of warriors it will take a high-tech military and old-fashioned spies "to save our children from a future of fear" like the horror of the September morning remembered Tuesday around the globe.

In a speech to uniformed military cadets at the Citadel, Bush emphasized how smart bombs, missile defenses and unmanned spy craft are necessary to crush the kind of terrorists who attacked the United States three months ago and threaten the nation still.

Retooling the armed forces while they are at war with terrorists in Afghanistan "is like overhauling a car engine while you're going at 80 miles an hour," Bush said.

"Yet we have no other choice."

The president flew here from a somber White House ceremony where the drum roll of a Marine band touched off strains of America's national anthem that reverberated from Albuquerque to London to outer space, marking the precise moment on Sept. 11 when the terrorists' first hijacked plane struck in New York.

The country needs no stone monument to that horrific instant, Bush said at his wife's side in the East Room.

"For those of us who lived through these events, the only marker we'll ever need is the tick of a clock on the 46th minute on the 8th hour of the 11th day."

He sounded a note of vindication as he returned to the site of his most prominent campaign speech on national security two years ago.

"I said here at the Citadel ... America was entering a period of consequences that would be defined by the threat of terrorism, and that we faced the challenge of military transformation," Bush told some 2,000 cadets whose white gloves muffled their applause.

"That threat has now revealed itself, and that challenge is now the military and moral necessity of our time."

Borrowing heavily from the text of that September 1999 address, Bush said a "revolution in our military" is needed to defeat terrorism.

The battlefields in Afghanistan have offered a proving ground for new tactics and new technologies, Bush said. Green Beret and Delta Force operatives on horseback call in airstrike coordinates "in the first cavalry charge of the 21st century."

The United States must rebuild its network of human spies – "the people who find the targets, follow our enemies and help us disrupt their evil plans" – and invest in more sophisticated weapon systems like the unmanned, missile-armed Predator surveillance plane.

As House and Senate negotiators work this week on a defense spending compromise, Bush said Congress "must give defense leaders the freedom to innovate, instead of micromanaging the Defense Department." And every service branch has to let go of pet projects, he said.

"Our war on terror cannot be used to justify obsolete bases, obsolete programs, or obsolete weapon systems."

Bush made an impassioned argument for pursuing the missile defense shield that Russia opposes.

"Suppose the Taliban and the terrorists had been able to strike America or important allies with a ballistic missile? ... We must protect America and her friends against all forms of terror, including the terror that could arrive on a missile," Bush said.

"For the good of peace, we're moving forward with an active program to determine what works and what does not work."

Behind the scenes, National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters "the time is coming" for the United States to get past the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that bans any missile defenses. He did not say whether this meant breaking or withdrawing from the treaty.

Bush instructed Homeland Security director Tom Ridge and National Security director Condoleezza Rice to work with other nations on strengthening nonproliferation treaties and toughening export controls in order to keep biological and nuclear materials from America's enemies.

"I wish I could report to the American people that this threat does not exist, that our enemy is content with car bombs and box cutters, but I cannot," Bush said.

"September 11th, 2001 – three months and a long time ago – set another dividing line in our lives and in the life of our nation. An illusion of immunity was shattered, a far-away evil became a present danger and a great cause became clear: We will fight terror and those who sponsor it to save our children from a future of fear."

AP-WS-12-11-01 1702EST