Thank you. Thank you so much. Let me begin for thanking Lee Hamilton, who has provided just extraordinary leadership, both with the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group and here at the Wilson Center. Lee has been a steady voice of reason in an unsteady time and we are grateful for the contributions that he's made to our country.

Let me also echo your comments, Lee. My thoughts and prayers are with your colleague, Haleh Esfandiari, and her family. I've made my position known to the Iranian government. Their detention of her is unacceptable. It is time for Haleh to be released. It is time for her to come home.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to come out with your busy schedules.

I want to acknowledge at least one of the Congressmen that you mentioned Lee, because I saw him just walk in, Congressman Steve Rothman of the 9th District of New Jersey. Thank you very much for being here.

Well, thanks to the 9/11 Commission, we know that six years ago this week President Bush received a briefing with the headline: "Bin Laden determined to strike [the U.S.]." It came during what the Commission called the "summer of threat," when the "system was blinking red" about an independent - impending attack. But despite the briefing, many felt the danger was overseas, a threat to embassies and military installations. The extremism, the resentment, the terrorist training camps, and the killers were in the dark corners of the world, far away from the American homeland.

And then one bright, beautiful Tuesday morning, they arrived at our shores. I remember that I was driving to a state legislative hearing in downtown Chicago when I heard the news on my car radio - that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. By the time I got to my meeting, the second plane had hit, and we were told to evacuate.

People gathered in the streets in Chicago, looking up at the sky and the Sears Tower, transformed from a workplace to a target. We feared for our families and we feared for our country. We mourned the terrible loss suffered by our fellow citizens. Back at my law office, I watched the images from New York: the plane vanishing into glass and steel; men and women clinging to windowsills, then letting go; tall towers crumbling to dust. It seemed all the misery and all the evil in the world were in that rolling black cloud, blocking out the September sun.

What we saw that morning forced us to recognize that in the new world of threats, we are no longer protected by our own power. And what we saw that morning was a challenge to a new generation.

The history of America is one of tragedy turned into triumph. And so a war over secession became an opportunity to set the captives free. An attack on Pearl Harbor led to a wave of freedom rolling across the Atlantic and Pacific. An Iron Curtain was punctured by democratic values, new institutions at home, and strong international partnerships abroad.

After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story - to devise a new strategy and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united. Friends around the world stood shoulder to shoulder with us. We had the might and moral suasion that was the legacy of generations of Americans. The tide of history seemed poised to turn, once again, toward hope.

But then everything changed.

We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland.

Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear - patriotism as the possession of one political Party; the diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries; a rigid 20th-century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state; a deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

And so, a little more than a year after that bright September day, I was in the streets of Chicago again, this time speaking at a rally in opposition to war in Iraq. I did not oppose all wars, I said. I was a strong supporter of the war in Afghanistan. But I said I could not support "a dumb war, a rash war" in Iraq. I worried about a "U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined costs, with undetermined consequences" in the heart of the Muslim world. I pleaded that we "finish the fight with bin Ladin and al Qaeda."

The political winds were blowing in a different direction. The President was determined to go to war and there was just one obstacle: the U.S. Congress. Nine days after I spoke, that obstacle was removed. Congress rubber-stamped the rush to war, giving the President the broad and open-ended authority he uses to this day. With that vote, Congress became co-author of a catastrophic war. And we went off to fight on the wrong battlefield, with no appreciation of how many enemies we would create, and no plan for how to get out.

And because of a war in Iraq that should've never been authorized and should've never been waged, we are now less safe than we were before 9/11.

According to the National Intelligence Estimate, the threat to our homeland from al Qaeda is - quote - "persistent and evolving." Iraq is a training ground for terror, torn apart by civil war. Afghanistan is more violent than it has been since 2001. Al Qaeda has a sanctuary in Pakistan. Israel is besieged by emboldened enemies, talking openly of its destruction. Iran is now presenting the broadest strategic challenge to the United States in the Middle East in a generation. Groups affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda operate worldwide. Six years after 9/11, we are again in the midst of a "summer of threat," with bin Ladin and many more terrorists determined to strike in the United States.

What's more, in the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantanamo, we have compromised our most precious values. What could have been a call to a generation has become an excuse for unchecked presidential power. A tragedy that united us was turned into a political wedge issue used to divide us.

It is time to turn the page. And it is time to write a new chapter in our response to 9/11.

Now be clear: Just because the President misrepresents our enemy does not mean that we do not have enemies. The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from a violent - is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman, and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate, and to defeat this enemy we must understand who are we are [sic] fighting against, and what are we fighting for [sic].

The President would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda's war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq - which didn't exist before our invasion - and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan right now. He lumps together groups with very different goals: al Qaeda and Iran, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. He confuses our mission.

And worse, he is fighting the war that the terrorists want us to fight. Bin Ladin and his allies know they cannot defeat us on the field of battle or in a genuine battle of ideas. But they can provoke the reaction we've seen in Iraq: a misguided invasion of a Muslim country that sparks new insurgencies, ties down our military, busts our budgets, increases the pool of terrorist recruits, alienates America, gives democracy a bad name, and prompts the American people to question our engagement in the world.

By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

It is time to turn the page. When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements:

[1] getting out of Iraq and on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan;

[2] developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons;

[3] engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism;

[4] restoring our values;

[5] and securing a more resilient homeland.

Let me talk about each of these in turn.

The first step must be to get off the wrong battlefield in Iraq and take the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I introduced a plan in January that would have already started bringing our troops out of Iraq, with the goal of removing all combat brigades by March 31st, 2008. If the President continues to veto this plan, then ending this war will be my first priority when I take office.

There is no military solution in Iraq. Only Iraq's leaders can settle the grievances at the heart of Iraqis' civil war. We must apply pressure on them to act, and our best leverage is reducing our troop presence. And we must also do the hard, sustained diplomatic work in the region on behalf of peace and stability.

In ending the war, we must act with more wisdom than we started it. That's why my plan would maintain sufficient forces in the region to target all al Qaeda within Iraq. But we must recognize that al Qaeda is not the primary source of violence in Iraq, and has little support - not from Shia and Kurds who are al Qaeda targets, or Sunni tribes hostile to foreigners. On the contrary, al Qaeda's appeal within Iraq is enhanced by our troop presence.

Ending the war will help isolate al Qaeda and give Iraqis the incentive and opportunity to take them out. It will also allow us to direct badly needed resources to Afghanistan. Our troops have fought valiantly there, but Iraq has deprived them of the support that they need and deserve. As a result, parts of Afghanistan are falling into the hands of the Taliban, and a mix of terrorism, drugs, and corruption threatens to overwhelm the country.

As President, I will deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO's efforts against the Taliban. As we step up our commitment, our European friends must do the same, and without the burdensome restrictions that have hampered NATO's efforts. We must also put more of an Afghan face on security by improving the training and equipping of Afghan Army and Police, and including Afghan soldiers in U.S. and NATO operations.

We must not, however, repeat the mistakes of Iraq. The solution in Afghanistan is not just military - it is political and economic. That's why as President, I will increase our non-military aid by one billion dollars to Afghanistan. These resources should fund projects at the local level to impact ordinary Afghans, including the development of alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. And we must seek better performance from the Afghan government, and support that performance through tough anti-corruption safeguards on aid, and increased international support to develop the rule of law across the country.

Above all, I will send a clear message: We will not repeat the mistakes of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared. And today, that security is most threatened by the al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan.

Al Qaeda terrorists train, travel, and maintain global communications in this safe-haven. The Taliban pursues a "hit and run" strategy, striking in Afghanistan, then skulking across the border to safety.

This is the wild frontier of our globalized world. There are wind-swept deserts and cave-dotted mountains. There are tribes that see borders as nothing more than lines on a map, and governments as forces that come and go. There are blood ties deeper than alliances of convenience, and pockets of extremism that follow religion to violence. It is a tough place.

But that is no excuse. There must be no safe-havens for terrorists who threaten America. We cannot fail to act just because action is hard.

As President, I would make hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

Now I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear: There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-valued terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will.

And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas,