My opponent spent two decades in Congress. He spent a long time in Washington and he's built up quite a record. Senator Kerry has been in Washington so long that he's taken both sides on just about every issue. Senator Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, for Nafta, for the No Child Left Behind Act, and for the use of force in Iraq. Now he opposes the Patriot Act, Nafta, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the liberation of Iraq. My opponent clearly has strong beliefs--they just don't last very long. . . .

Some are skeptical that the war on terror is really a war at all. Just days ago my opponent indicated he's not comfortable using the word, "war," to describe the struggle we're in. He said, "I don't want to use that terminology." He also said the war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law enforcement operation. I disagree. Our nation followed that approach after the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. The matter was handled in the courts, and thought by some to be settled. But the terrorists were still training in Afghanistan, plotting in other nations and drawing up more ambitious plans. And after the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got.

One very important part of this war is intelligence-gathering, as Senator Kerry noted. Yet, in 1995, two years after the attack on the World Trade Center, my opponent introduced a bill to cut the overall intelligence budget by one-and-a-half billion dollars. His bill was so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single co-sponsor in the United States Senate. Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways. He's for good intelligence, yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services. And that is no way to lead a nation in a time of war.