Given on September 12. Transcription by Reg.

And finally, we've got to pay attention to what's happening here on the home front. Yes, we've got a Department of Homeland Security, but we've never put out standards that distribute the effort between government and industry - the petrochemical industry for example. What's the standard? How many guardsmen do you have to have? What kind of protection do you have to have? How do you deal with the threat? What kind of security do you have to have? What's the standoff distance? We haven't told industry that. We're waiting for industry to discover and industry can't, because security takes away from the bottom line. And so unless everybody's on the same playing field everybody undercuts what they have to do to secure their own facilities. It's just the nature of private enterprise. So we've got to have some government leadership in this. We need to put more resources into homeland security, and that's clear from the response to Katrina. We need better training exercises. We need stronger control of the border. We need to field some of that new technology. We need a real civil defense organization in America. Every American neighborhood should have a place in the civil defense organization, so that if we have to do an evacuation we don't leave 80,000 people behind and nobody knows who they are or how to take care of them. We can do better than that in the United States of America.
And finally, we have to go back and rework the Patriot Act. We cannot win the war on terror if you give up the fundamental freedoms that we're fighting to protect. It's that simple.
(applause)
See I don't agree with those people in Europe, my friends over there who are worried that somehow, you know, history has passed us by, and we can't handle the challenges. I think we can. I think we're a great people. I think we've got the best form of government in the world. And I think we've got tremendous resources. I think we've got strong values. What we need is the right strategy.
I was in New Hampshire a couple of years ago, and I was up in front of an editorial board (inaudible under crown chuckling) A woman asked me sort of a four-way(?) question. She said, she said, "Well, General," she said, "I just don't understand how I'm going to raise my daughter for 20 years on a world where every- we're always looking over our shoulder and we're afraid of a terrorist attack. How are we going to live in that world? And you know, we don't have to live in that world. With the right strategy, with the right leadership, with the right approach we can succeed in winning the war on terror, and we can put in place an approach that will keep America strong and safe and free, even facing the economic challenges from abroad. It's really up to us. It's our choice, and it's our obligation.
Thank you.
(Standing ovation)
(Question and answer session to follow)