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Full text of Bush speech
This is a text of U.S. President George W. Bush's speech to the Australian parliament Thursday, as supplied by the White House: Governor General Michael Jeffery, Prime Minister John Howard, Speaker of the House, leader of the Senate, leader of the opposition Simon Crean, distinguished members of the House and Senate, premiers, members of the diplomatic corps, ladies and gentlemen: Laura and I are honored to be in the Commonwealth of Australia. I want to thank the Prime Minister for his invitation, I want to thank the members and senators for convening this session of parliament, and I want to thank the people of Australia for their gracious welcome. Five months ago, your Prime Minister was a distinguished visitor of ours in Crawford, Texas, to our ranch. You might remember that I called him a "man of steel." That's Texan for "fair dinkum." Prime Minister John Howard is a leader of exceptional courage, who exemplifies the finest qualities of one of the world's great democracies. I'm proud to call him friend. Americans know Australia as a land of independent, enterprising and goodhearted people. We see something familiar here, and something we like. Australians are fair-minded, and tolerant, and easygoing. Yet in times of trouble and danger, Australians are the first to step forward, to accept the hard duties, and to fight bravely until the fighting is done. In a hundred years of experience, American soldiers have come to know the courage and good fellowship of the diggers at their side. We fought together in the battle at Le Hamel, together in the Coral Sea, together on New Guinea and on the Korean peninsula, in Vietnam. And in the war on terror, once again, we are at each other's side. In this war, the Australian and American people have witnessed the methods of the enemy. We saw the scope of their hatred on September 11, 2001. We saw the depth of their cruelty on October 12, 2002. We saw destruction, and grief -- and we saw our duty. As free nations in peril, we must fight this enemy with all of our strength. No country can live peacefully in the world that terrorists would make for us. And no people are immune from the sudden violence that has come to an office building, or an airplane, or a nightclub, or a city bus. Your nation and mine have known the shock, and felt the sorrow, and laid the dead to rest -- and we refuse to live our lives at the mercy of murderers.
The nature of the terrorist threat defines the strategy we are using to fight it. These committed killers will not be stopped by negotiations. They will not respond to reason. The terrorists cannot be appeased -- they must be found, and they must be fought, and they must be defeated. The terrorists hide and strike within free societies -- so we are draining their funds, and disrupting their plans, and finding their leaders. The skilled work of Thai and Indonesian and other authorities in finding and capturing the terrorist Hambali, suspected of planning the murders in Bali and other attacks, was a model of the determined campaign we are waging. The terrorists seek safe harbor to plot and to train -- so we are holding the allies of terror to account. America, Australia and other nations acted in Afghanistan to destroy the home base of al Qaeda and rid that country of a terror regime. And the Afghan people, especially the Afghan women, do not miss the bullying, and beatings, and public executions at the hands of the Taliban. The terrorists hope to gain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, the means to match their hatred. So we are confronting outlaw regimes that aid terrorists, and pursue weapons of mass destruction and defy the demands of the world. America, Australia and other nations acted in Iraq to remove a grave and gathering danger, instead of wishing and waiting while tragedy drew closer. Since the liberation of Iraq, we have discovered Saddam's clandestine network of biological laboratories, the design work on prohibited long-range missiles, his elaborate campaign to hide illegal weapons programs. Saddam Hussein spent years frustrating U.N. inspectors for a simple reason: because he was violating U.N. demands. And in the end, rather than surrender his programs and abandon his lies, he chose defiance and his own undoing. Who can possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power? Surely not the dissidents who would be in his prisons, or end up in mass graves. Surely not the men and women who would fill Saddam's torture chambers and rape rooms. Surely not the families of the victims he murdered with poison gas. Surely not anyone who cares about human rights and democracy and stability in the Middle East. Surely not anyone who cares about human rights and democracy and stability in the Middle East. Today, Saddam's regime is gone, and no one should mourn its passing. In the months leading up to our action in Iraq, Australia and America went to the United Nations. We are committed to multilateral institutions, because global threats require a global response. We are committed to collective security. And collective security requires more than solemn discussions and sternly worded pronouncements; it requires collective will. If the resolutions of the world are to be more than ink on paper, they must be enforced. If the institutions of the world are to be more than debating societies, they must eventually act. If the world promises serious consequences for the defiance of the lawless, then serious consequences must follow. Because we enforced Resolution 1441, and used force in Iraq as a last resort, there is one more free nation in the world, and all free nations are more secure. We accepted our obligations with open eyes, mindful of the sacrifices that had been made and those to come. The burdens fall most heavily on the men and women of our armed forces and their families. The world has seen the bravery and skill of the Australian military. Your special operations forces were among the first units on the ground in Iraq. And in Afghanistan, the first casualty among America's allies was Australian: Special Air Service Sgt. Andrew Russell. This afternoon, I will lay a wreath at the Australian War Memorial, in memory of Sergeant Russell and the long line of Australians who have died in service to this nation. And my nation honors their service to the cause of freedom, to the cause we share. Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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