Now, we have hope in this election because of what happened to South Dakota. Let me remind you about South Dakota. It was about the only place in America they couldn't demonize Tom Daschle because the people of South Dakota knew him. And it was the only place in America where we successfully nationalized the election because there was no way to avoid it. In South Dakota, the president came five times, the Republican candidate John Thune is an articulate, attractive man, who looks right out of central casting. But we had money, message, and turnout too. They have a 50 to 37 registration advantage over us in South Dakota yet we won, which shows you that if we have a national message and we're willing to compete, we can win even under adverse circumstances.

So, what do we draw from all this? Well without a national message that says where we agree, where we disagree, a message that defends our record and has positive proposals for the future, we can't win a midterm election and we sure can't win a presidential election. With one, we can.

Where are we now? Well the Republicans have what they want -- the White House and the Congress -- so presumably, they'll finally have to stop playing the blame game and take some responsibility, and the American people can determine whether they agree with what they wish to do. Meanwhile, we have a heavy responsibility to cooperate in uniting this country on security issues and also to come up with better ideas across the board. We don't have to be more liberal but we do have to be more relevant in a progressive way. We have to have a clear and strong national security stand. We have to compare the results of their efforts and ours. And we have to be tough and disciplined. We cannot wilt in the face of higher negative ratings for our leaders. They have a destruction machine, we don't. Somebody has got to lead the Democrats in the House, in the Senate and in running for president, and the rest of us have got to stand up for them and stand with them when they're subject to these attacks. They cannot be avoided. That's what the other party and their allies are organized to do and they get rewarded for it if we wilt. So we abandon our leaders at our peril.

Now, most Americans don't care about what politicians say about each other and don't care about what happens to politicians unless it affects them, their children or their future. But they do have their ears and eyes open at election time. So we have to be firm and clear and strong and positive and prepared to defend our positions and those who are brave enough to stick their necks out to take them.

What should the positions be? First, on national security, the facts are that the majority of the Democrats have been clear and virtually unanimous in the fight against terror, and in supporting defense increases. The majority of us stood up and said, yes, we do have to have unlimited and unambiguous inspections in Iraq and the ability to use force, if necessary, if those inspections and the mandate of the UN are not honored. That's what we wanted all along, exactly what has been done. We need to make that clear. We now have a homeland security department and that's fine. It'll probably do more good than harm.

But it's not nearly enough. What should our security position be? First of all, we ought to listen to Senator Graham. Al-Qaida should be our top priority, Iraq is important but the terrorist network is more urgent in terms of its threat to our immediate security as we have seen recently in the attacks in Kenya and in Bali. There was a report in the press recently that the number two man in the al-Qaida organization, Dr. al-Zawahiri is hiding out in Bangladesh. If he is, we ought to find him and get him. He's as smart at bin Laden, not quite as charismatic, but equally ruthless. He heads the Egyptian Terrorist Network that murdered Anwar Sadat over 20 years ago.

Secondly, we have to have real accountability if we're going to have this reorganization. Who's going to be held accountable to make sure all this intelligence is shared and what happens if it isn't?

Somebody has to be accountable for law enforcement following up on the leads they do have. After all, one FBI agent in July and another in August called the central office of the FBI and said, hey, there are people here training, flying airplanes and they're not taking them off, they're not landing them. They just want to know how to fly them. There are a couple of thousand flight schools in America. It wouldn't have been that hard to check them all. You can reorganize all you want and you can't supplant that.

Someone also has to be accountable for making sure that we modernize information technology. Before we go round up all these people and profile them because they're Muslims or Arabs or wear turbans, it'd be good to know that the government has the same information, checked it on a weekly basis, that's already in the computers of every mass mailing company in the country on the rest of us. We're all in somebody's computer. They know where we live, they know where we pay our utility bills, they know how many credit cards we have. They know what our debt is. Mark is laughing because the biggest one of these companies is in Arkansas. My best childhood friend works for this company. He called me a couple of days after September 11th and said, we got four FBI agents here and we've already found five of these terrorists in our computers. Well you say, that's fine but could they have known before September 11th? You tell me. One of the men, who flew an airplane into the World Trade Center, had 30 credit cards, a quarter of a million of dollars in debt and a consolidated payout schedule of $9,800 a month. Now, since this information is already available on all of us, you could scan that once a week. If somebody if has been in this country for two years or less and they already have 30 credit cards and a quarter a million dollars in debt, they're either really rich or up to no good and it shouldn't be that hard to figure out which.

Mohammed Atta, the ring leader, had 12 addresses, two places he lived and 10 safe houses, under the names Mohammed Atta, Mohammed J. Atta, J. Atta, and his middle initials spelled out. So if somebody has been here a couple years or less and they have 12 homes, they're either really rich or up to no good. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out which. That's more important than all that reorganization. That's what we ought to advocate. We ought to drive it home, that ought to be our homeland security position. It's a legitimate issue.

We also ought to do more on weapons on mass destruction. I approve of what's being done in Iraq now and the way it's being done, but it's not enough. We spent a lot of your tax money when I was president getting all the nuclear weapons out of the other nations of the former Soviet Union and getting them all into Russia and then reducing the number of nuclear weapons and destroying the many of them. We agreed with the Russians to destroy 50 tons of plutonium each and to do other things that would minimize the nuclear threat.

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