Transcript: The President's Interview with Print Media Columnists
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
Transcript
October 25, 2006
INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT WITH COLUMNISTS
The Oval Office
2:27 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thanks for coming. What I thought I would do is talk a little bit, share my mind with you, and then answer questions for a while. We're on the record until I tell you we're not on the record. And some times that works, and a lot of times it doesn't work. I'm a skeptical "off the record" guy.
As I said in the press conference today, it is conceivable that 20 or 30 years from now the world will see a Middle East in which violent forms of – extreme forms of Islam compete for power, moderate governments will be toppled, oil will be used to extract concessions, and Iran will have a nuclear weapon, and writers such as yourself would say, what happened to them? How come they couldn't see the great conflict taking place in front of their very eyes? Why did they lose their nerve? Why did they not support moderate people who yearn for something better than the vision of the extremists?
And my answer to it is, I see the threat, and will use American power to protect ourselves, and at the same time, try to create the first victory in this ideological – the first victories – in the ideological war of the 21st century.
So, much of the thinking and decision-making that I do now is based upon my belief that we're in this grand ideological struggle. It is a struggle between moderate people, and a struggle between ideologues who are totalitarian and kill to achieve an objective without conscience.
It's interesting, here in America, I ran into a kid the other day who used to work here and he goes to a famous law school, and he said, the problem, Mr. President, is people don't believe we're at war. I not only believe we're at war, I know we're at war. My biggest issue that I think about all the time is the next attack on America, because I am fully aware that there are people out there that would like nothing more than to have another spectacular moment by killing the American people.
And they're coming. And we've got to do everything we can to stop them. That's why I believe we ought to listen to their phone calls, obviously on a limited basis, one coming out of the country, and why I know we need to interrogate these people. That's why we need the Patriot Act. That's why we need to be on the offense all the time.
Iraq is the central part of this global war right now. The extremists, radicals have made it clear that they want us to leave. You know, it's an interesting world in which people are not willing to listen to the words of an enemy, but in this case, we're able to listen to the enemy and find out what the enemy thinks and publish their thoughts. The Commander-in-Chief must listen carefully and take their words extremely seriously.
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