Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2008, says the airline terror plot uncovered this week underscores his contention that we’re in the midst of a third world war.
“You know you have a British plot with Pakistani personnel directly aimed at the United States,” Gingrich says. “You have to recognize how interconnected these things are…It’s very important for us to have a realistic strategy for victory and understand that that’s what we want. These people are our enemies. We have to defeat our enemies, not just accommodate or survive them.”
According to Gingrich, the United Nations isn’t offering a practical solution for Lebanon and the U.S. needs to start offering a more comprehensive approach to what’s happening there, as well as to the nuclear threat that North Korea poses. “If our enemies get nuclear or biological weapons there’s a very real danger they’ll use them and instead of us losing two buildings we’ll lose a city,” Gingrich says. “Yesterday was a reminder of how deeply committed these people are to killing themselves if necessary if that enables them to kill us.”
The security crack-down at American airports is necessary, according to Gingrich, but he sees a little of the ridiculous in it, too. “I think taking away lipstick is kind of absurd,” Gingrich says. “It seems to me sometimes the bureaucracy either can’t do anything or it does too much. But I think most Americans would rather have militancy and be patient about it than run the risk of getting killed.”
Gingrich contends that Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat who backs the way President Bush is prosecuting the war, would have won rather than lost this past Tuesday if the airline terror plot had been revealed before voters went to the polls. “I’m an army brat and my dad served in three wars — in World War II and Korea and Vietnam — and I’m certainly very uncomfortable with us not having done better than we have in Iraq,” Gingrich says. “But I think the answer is to redouble our efforts and to ensure that we win, not to find a way to be defeated — leaving Iran in control of the Persian Gulf.”
Gingrich appeared last (Thursday) night at events in Sioux City with Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle. Over the noon-hour today (Friday), Gingrich headlined a fundraiser for GOP congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti of Ankeny before heading to the State Fair.
Tomorrow (Saturday), Gingrich will return to the fairgrounds to hold a 10 o’clock forum with Democrat Governor Tom Vilsack. Gingrich says he and Vilsack both agree that America needs a much more aggressive, comprehensive strategy to use so-called “biofuels” like ethanol and soy-diesel. Gingrich contends expanding production of soy-based diesel creates a byproduct that’s fed to fish and it might boost the nation’s aquaculture industry on one hand and on the other reduce the import of sea food. Sea food is the third largest import commodity in the U.S.