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America's New War: House Minority Leader Discusses President's Speech

Aired September 21, 2001 - 07:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: It was history in the making, in a speech before Congress last night, President Bush made it quite clear America is determined to wipe out terrorism across the globe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make, either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: And this morning it doesn't seem to matter which side of the political aisle they sat, Democratic and Republican leaders alike are supporting the president's call for unity.

For more on that, we go to Capitol Hill where House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt is standing by.

Good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us, sir.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Good morning. What did you think of the president's speech last night?

GEPHARDT: I thought it was a very good speech. I thought he explained what was happening, why it was happening. He explained the motivation of the people that we're up against. He talked about the complexity of these networks. And then he really called the country to resolve and arms and will to deal with this problem even though it's a tough new foe that we face that we've never faced before.

ZAHN: When the president said either you are with us or you are with the terrorists, can you describe to us this morning who is not with us onboard?

GEPHARDT: Well, we're not altogether sure. What he has been saying for over a week, and I think he's right in saying it, is that we're not only going to go against the terrorist network and the people that operate in it, we're going to also ultimately go against countries that are helping them, giving them aid and support and safe harbor. I think that's an important thing to do.

These networks couldn't operate without a lot of the money, a lot of the training camps, a lot of the help that they're getting from some countries. Obviously, Afghanistan has given them that, that's why he's speaking directly to the government of Afghanistan, asking them to turn bin Laden over, asking them to shutdown these training camps. If they don't, then ultimately we have to take actions to try to drive that and stop that -- stop that.

Now there are other countries that may be involved as well. We're going to get into that as we go along. Remember these are networks of thousands of people in probably in over 40 to 45 countries. So there are a lot of situations, a lot of people and there's a lot of aid and support that we got to deal with.

ZAHN: You no doubt have heard this morning the Taliban is saying that it will not turn over Osama bin Laden without proof or evidence linking him to these crimes here last week. I know most of Congress isn't surprised about that, but what is in fact the next step, particularly when the president didn't attach any kind of deadline to his ultimatum last night?

GEPHARDT: Well, first of all, you got to remember that bin Laden has already been indicted here by our court system for other terrorist acts that have happened around the world. So there may not be all of the court case that you'd want in this case, we sure have a lot of suspicion, we have a lot of evidence that links him and his network with this September 11 event.

As to how to deal with it, I think we just got to wait and see the ways that we can work to deal with this problem. President said last night we're going to deal with it politically, economically, financially and militarily and there are all kinds of military responses. As Bob was just saying at the Pentagon, this is not going to be a traditional war. Yes, we're sending some planes and some troops but you can use those in very untraditional ways. We can have covert operations. The truth is they don't know how we're going to get this done and we're going to have to use all the means at our -- at our disposal to get it done, and it will be in many ways a surprise to both Afghanistan and to bin Laden when it happens.

ZAHN: I just have time for one last question, given the reaction of the Taliban today, do you think the president set too high of a bar last night?

GEPHARDT: I don't. I think we've got to know what the goal is and we've got to know that it is going to be hard, it is going to be long. We have to be patient, we have to have resolve. I was asked yesterday is it too much to say we're going to wipe out terrorism? Well, the problem with saying we're going to wipe out some terrorism is that if you're a victim of some that's left, it's not good enough. This has to be done for not only us but for the civilized world. This is really the whole world against a small band of fanatic extremists and the whole world has to prosecute this battle and win it and we will.

ZAHN: Representative Gephardt, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We appreciate your time.

GEPHARDT: Thank you.

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