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Bush: U.S. Will Use 'Every Resource'
Thursday, September 20, 2001 (17:41 EDT)
By By David Espo / AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON -- AP
President Bush vowed in remarks prepared for an address to Congress Thursday to employ “every necessary weapon of war” and more in a worldwide battle against terrorism, and bluntly challenged nations around the globe to join the effort.

With American warplanes and ships on the move, he urged an anxious nation in the official text released before his prime time address to be “calm and resolute.”

“We are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom,” Bush said in the remarks prepared for an appearance before both houses of Congress nine days after the deadliest terrorism attacks in American history.

Bush's speech came as New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sharply revised the number of missing and presumed dead to 6,333 at the World Trade Center twin towers, destroyed by the impact of hijacked jetliners. An additional 189 are believed to have died in a similar attack on the Pentagon, and 44 more perished when a fourth hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

The nation's woes were compounded by concerns about the economy -- another victim of the acts of terror. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress earlier in the day that “much economic activity ground to a halt” after the attacks.

Lawmakers and the administration labored through the day on a package of economic relief for the airlines industry.

“We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and defeat of the global terror network,” Bush said in the advance text of his speech.

He called on Americans to recognize that this would be a war against terrorist extremists, not the Muslim faith, whose teachings he called “good and peaceful.”

Bush, who has met with nearly a dozen foreign leaders in the past nine days to build an international coalition, said he was asking for the help of “police forces, intelligence services and banking systems around the world.”

“Freedom and fear are at war,” he declared in his text.
(More: AP News Source)

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