In My Time - Dick Cheney [181]
We are dealing here with evil people who dwell in the shadows, planning unimaginable violence and destruction. We have no alternative but to meet the enemy where he dwells. Sometimes that means doing business with people you would not like to have as your next-door neighbor. We must and we will use every means at our disposal to ensure the freedom and security of the American people.
The response in the room was resounding applause. I have often heard people from other countries comment on American patriotism, not negatively, but in amazement and admiration that our love for our country is so deep and abiding. On that night, thinking of the war under way, I spoke for all when I said, “We love our country only more when she is threatened.”
After my speech I received additional information about the botulinum hits. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Homeland Security Advisor Tom Ridge reported that if we had been exposed, we would be showing symptoms by now. It had been fifty-eight hours since the last sensor was tripped. We were all feeling well, and so it looked as though we were off the hook.
Leaving the Waldorf by motorcade, we headed back to LaGuardia. Heightened security precautions meant that the NYPD had shut down all the streets along the motorcade route, backing traffic up for miles. I worried there would be a lot of unhappy New Yorkers. But as my long motorcade, led by police motorcycles and squad cars with lights and sirens, drove through the city streets that night, I looked out the window of my limo to see something completely unexpected and very moving—New Yorkers whose cars had been stopped, standing in the street cheering and applauding us.
OUR SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES were delayed getting into Afghanistan, not least by treacherous weather. They confronted rain, snow, and even sandstorms as they tried to fly helicopters over mountains as high as sixteen thousand feet. On October 19, 2001, the first twelve-man team went in near Mazar-e-Sharif in the north, and a unit of two hundred army rangers seized an airfield, code name Rhino, in the south, near Kandahar. Another special operations team raided a compound of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban. I have a brick from his compound that was given to me by some of the special operations forces who seized it. It sits in my office next to a brick from the house where special operators killed Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in June 2006. Both are reminders of the tremendous work America’s armed forces do in making the world a very dangerous place for terrorists.
Once we had boots on the ground in Afghanistan and special operators linking up with the Northern Alliance and other opposition groups, I had expected things would start to move quickly, and I grew concerned when that didn’t happen. On November 2, 2001, the National Security Council had an expanded session with General Franks. I participated via secure videoconference from the office in Laurel Lodge. “If you look at the situation from a purely military standpoint, you would say time is on our side,” I said. “Continuing operations against Taliban targets will weaken them, and the insertion of special forces and resupply efforts will strengthen the Northern Alliance.” But in the larger strategic context, I said, it was just the opposite. “Time is not on our side.” Every day that al Qaeda and its supporters went without major defeat, the danger to the United States grew. I was at that very moment operating from an undisclosed location because another attack