- WEST POINT, NY (AP) -- President Bush, likening the war against Islamic radicals
to the Cold War threat of communism, told U.S. Military Academy graduates
on Saturday that America's safety depends on an aggressive push for democracy,
especially in the Middle East.
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- The president took a subtle jab at Syria
and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. He chided previous U.S. administrations,
saying that decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in
the Middle East did nothing to make America safer.
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- "This is only the beginning,"
Bush said. "The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the
future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty
reaches every people in every nation."
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- Bush delivered his 35-minute foreign
policy address to 861 cadets, all clad in crisp white slacks and gray jackets.
Overcast skies threatened rain but did not dampen the graduates' enthusiasm
for the president's tough talk against terrorism.
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- "The war began on my watch, but
it's going to end on your watch," Bush told the cadets. "By standing
with democratic reforms across a troubled region, we will extend freedom
to millions who have not known it and lay the foundation for peace for
generations to come."
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- Bush compared his moment in presidential
history to that of President Truman's.
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- "As President Truman put it towards
the end of his presidency, 'When history says that my term of office saw
the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years
we set the course that can win it.' His leadership paved the way for subsequent
presidents from both political parties - men like Eisenhower, Kennedy and
Reagan - to confront and eventually defeat the Soviet threat," Bush
said.
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- "Today, at the start of a new century,
we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before,
and like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory."
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- Truman told the class of 1952 at West
Point that the quest for global peace depended on the active and vigorous
work to bring about freedom and justice across the world.
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- "That same principle continues to
guide us in today's war on terror," Bush told the class of 2006, the
first to enter the academy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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- Bush recounted his strategy for fighting
terrorism, saying that the U.S. continues to view anyone who harbors a
terrorist equally guilty of being a terrorist. He received loud applause,
muffled only by the cadets' white gloves, when he told of his doctrine
of pre-emptive strikes, attacking enemies abroad before they can attack
U.S. soil.
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- The greatest danger America faces is
the threat from terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction, Bush
said.
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- "If our enemies succeed in acquiring
such weapons, they will not hesitate to use them, which means they would
pose a threat to America as great as the Soviet Union," he said. "Against
such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back
down, we will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than
complete victory."
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- Bush flew to New York from the Camp David
presidential retreat in western Maryland, where he is spending the Memorial
Day weekend.
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- One of Bush's guests at Camp David was
former Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a longtime Bush friend and possible
replacement for Treasury Secretary John Snow, who has signaled his desire
to step down when the White House finds a replacement
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