From Fox News sunday today.
Condi
WALLACE: Do you think that this president, this campaign, is attacking John Kerry's patriotism?
RICE: I don't think anyone is attacking anyone's patriotism. Let's talk about the ideas. Let's talk about how one intends to lead in a period of time in which the United States has taken a tremendous blow after September 11th and is now poised for war.
Let's talk about — you know, at the 9/11 hearings, very interesting, a lot of talk about what we should have done earlier in Afghanistan. A pretty good argument, actually, for not allowing gathering threats and dealing with threats when they emerge. And that's what this president has said. He's said that 9/11 has taught us to deal with threats differently.
Now, we are having a debate. Some people think that the response to 9/11, to that act of war that was committed against us, to the people who tried to decapitate us on that day and shut down our financial system, that the response to that ought to be limited war. We'll win in Afghanistan, we'll kill bin Laden, and we'll return to defensive position.
This president believes that it's a broad war, that you not only have to deal with Afghanistan, but you've got to deal with the circumstances in the Middle East that have created Al Qaida, created the ideologies of hatred that are driving them, that you've got to have peaceful and stable Iraq as a lynchpin of a different kind of Middle East.
That's the debate we ought to be having, not about somebody's patriotism.