We are fighting terrorism on all fronts with a three-prong strategy. First, we are working to rally a world coalition with zero tolerance for terrorism. Just this month I signed a law imposing harsh sanctions on foreign companies that invest in key sectors of the Iranian and Libyan economies. As long as Iran trains, supports, and protects terrorists, as long as Libya refuses to give up the people who blew up Pan Am 103, they will pay a price from the United States.
Second, we must give law enforcement the tools they need to take the fight to terrorists. We need new laws to crack down on money laundering and to prosecute and punish those who commit violent acts against American citizens abroad; to add chemical markers or taggants to gunpowder used in bombs so we can track the bomb-makers; to extend the same power police now have against organized crime to save lives by tapping all the phones that terrorists use. Terrorists are as big a threat to our future, perhaps bigger, than organized crime. Why should we have two different standards for a common threat to the safety of America and our children?
We need, in short, the laws that Congress refused to pass. And I ask them again: Please, as an American, not a partisan matter, pass these laws now.
Third, we will improve airport and air travel security. I have asked the Vice President to establish a commission and report back to me on ways to do this. But now we will install the most sophisticated bomb-detection equipment in all our major airports. We will search every airplane flying to or from America from another nation -- every flight, every cargo hold, every cabin, every time.
....I still believe in a place called Hope, a place called America.
Thank you, God bless you, and good night.
1996.
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/1096/ijpe/clin1.htmSome 11 years later and it all sounds the same in some ways.
I guess I was not paying attention back then.