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| Bush: "Get ready" |
| 2001-09-15 |
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — President Bush vowed today that "those who make war on the United States have chosen their own destruction" and steeled Americans for a long struggle that would require personal sacrifice. As he prepared to sign a law passed overwhelmingly by Congress approving the use of force against Tuesday's terrorist attacks, Mr. Bush warned in his weekly radio address that the responsewould be "a conflict without battlefields or beachheads" and that "the conflict will not be short." Mr. Bush also said in a brief appearance with reporters before convening his National Security Council at Camp David that the Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden was "what we would call a prime suspect" in the terrorist attacks. But Mr. Bush gave no indication of how he planned to wage a military campaign or what its targets would be. "The message is for everybody who wears the uniform: get ready," he said. The administration also pressed ahead on the diplomatic front, campaigning through its envoys around the world to build a solid international coalition against what Mr. Bush called "an act of war." In an unusually strong diplomatic intervention, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has asked Saudi Arabia, America's closest ally in the Persian Gulf, and the United Arab Emirates to sever diplomatic relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan, senior administration officials said today. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |