The United States has done “enormous damage to al Qaeda” in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the group -- and other “wanna-be” al Qaedas -- still pose a threat, Vice President Dick Cheney said today. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney said the United States and its allies have killed or captured hundreds of al Qaeda’s leaders and that the countries must have the will to continue the war on terror. The enemy, he said, wants to recreate a “Caliphate” -- or supreme Islamic state -- that stretched from Spain all the way to Indonesia. “They want to topple the regimes that are there today,” Cheney said. “They want to kick the United Sates out of that part of the world. They want to destroy Israel, and they want to equip themselves with weapons of mass destruction.”
The terrorist strategy in this is to break U.S. will. “They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight. They never have. But they are absolutely convinced they can break our will,” Cheney said. He added that the enemy thinks the American people don’t have the stomach for a protracted fight. Allies also feel this doubt. He said Afghans and Iraqis “want to know if they stick their heads up if the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission.”