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We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.

Since the tragedies, the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, and most importantly, to share intelligence information among government agencies and departments.

While the CDC is focusing on how our enemies could attack us, our military is focused on who may attack us.

Nevertheless, I do know that we are part of a danger zone, we have military operations in Afghanistan and we're training the Iraqi police force. The terrorists also have us in their sights.

They have involved co-operation between the Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda operatives on training and combined operations regarding bomb making and chemical and biological weapons.

While maintaining our nuclear potential at the proper level, we need to devote more attention to developing the entire range of means of information warfare.

So we have a group within the office that is devoted to support for the war fighter. That's, of necessity, an operational and tactical level of concern.

And then fourth, we have that essential group of people who track programs and budgets to ensure that they align with the needs of preparation and warning, counterintelligence and support to the operational war fighter.

I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency.

The president's very right about one thing: When you have a disaster of that scale, whether it be natural or a terrorist attack, there's only one part of our entire government, state or local, that is equipped to handle it, and that's the U.S. military.