Vice President Cheney Speaks in Spokane Washington

We received a visit from our nations Vice President here in Spokane Washington yesterday.

'Vice President Dick Cheney called for the nation to stay the course on the war in Iraq and mounted a vigorous defense of a controversial surveillance program as he campaigned in Spokane on Monday.

Appearing at a fund-raising reception for GOP Senate candidate Mike McGavick, Cheney warned against what he called "the temptation to downplay the threat" of global terrorists, who he said are "making a stand in Iraq, testing our resolve."

"We have a continuing responsibility to lead in this fight," he told a crowd estimated at 200 in a Davenport Hotel ballroom. "Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not."

After arriving in downtown Spokane from Fairchild Air Force Base but before addressing the McGavick reception, Cheney met with a few donors who paid $2,100 each for a "roundtable" conversation with the vice president and some members of the state's congressional delegation.

That meeting was closed to the public and news media, but participants said immigration, medical technology and local growth were among topics discussed.

Cheney told the group that he was opposed to amnesty for undocumented immigrants but that some type of guest worker program was needed for those in jobs that employers can't find Americans to take, said Mick McDowell, a local developer who attended the session.

"It sounded like a work in progress," said McDowell, adding that the session convinced him that Cheney and the other leaders "had nothing but the best interests of the country, and the region, in mind."

Not mentioned in the roundtable, participants said, nor in Cheney's speech later, was one of the biggest disputes between the Northwest and the Bush White House: a plan to rearrange charges for some electricity from the federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers and raise rates for many of the region's public utilities.

In his speech, Cheney said U.S. troop levels will decline as the Iraqis build up their government and security forces but that decision will be made by commanders in the field, "not by artificial timelines set by politicians."

One of the signs that President Bush is serious about the war, Cheney said, is a program that he contends is wrongly described as domestic surveillance. It only involves wiretapping of calls in which one party is outside the country and at least one end of the conversation involves someone suspected of being a member or an "affiliate" of al-Qaida, he said.

"It is not domestic surveillance; it is terrorism surveillance," he said, adding the program is reviewed and reauthorized every 45 days. It has been reauthorized more than 30 times, he said.

Cheney told Republicans that Washington state needs to elect McGavick this fall to continue the "clear thinking and courage" that have marked the past five years of the Bush administration. McGavick's opponent, if he defeats nominal opposition in the GOP primary, will be Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, who voted for the war and has supported all spending measures for the troops as well as the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which Cheney called "one of the vital safeguards to our country."'

Vice President Cheney Speaks in Spokane Washington