FORT DRUM, N.Y. – One soldier yelled, “Let’s get Saddam!” as President Bush yesterday thanked pumped-up fighting forces here for their service in Afghanistan, vowing, “What we have begun, we will finish.”
“Terrorism is fueled by boundless hatred,” Bush said on his first visit to the northern New York home of the 10th Mountain Division, which sent thousands of soldiers to fight the Taliban. “Terrorism will be stopped by a mighty nation with a strong and ready military,” Bush added.
Speaking from a makeshift podium, the president – without mentioning Iraq by name – added, “The work has just begun.”
In his 23-minute speech, Bush took aim at “tyrants” and regimes who aid terrorists and produce weapons of mass destruction.
“Against such enemies, we cannot sit quietly and hope for the best,” he said. “To ignore this mounting danger is to invite it. America must act against these terrible threats before they’re fully formed.”
One soldier was more direct.
“Let’s get Saddam!” he yelled to wild applause.
Bush didn’t respond directly, but said, “Some parts of the world, there will be no substitute for direct action by the United States. That is when we will send you, our military, to win the battles that only you can win.”
Bush received loud applause after urging the Senate to follow the House’s lead and pass a Department of Defense spending bill by the end of the month and for his call for more modern technology to fight terrorism.
He spent three hours at the base, meeting and greeting soldiers and their families and watching military demonstrations of units that had been deployed in different parts of the world.
“You have the nation’s gratitude for all you have done and the nation’s confidence in all that you will do,” Bush said.
The 10th Mountain, a light infantry, rapid-deployment force ready to go anywhere in the world within 48 hours, was the Army’s most frequently deployed division in the 1990s. Most of the unit’s troops deployed after Sept. 11 returned home in April.