Excerpt from the President's remarks to the Democratic National Committee in Sacramento this afternoon: ... But the most likely problems -- there are a couple little babies in this audience, or there were today, and some children -- the most likely problems these children will face when they come of age will be problems that cross national borders -- terrorism, organized crime and drug running, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons and maybe small-scale nuclear weapons. This much nuclear cake put in a bomb would do ten times as much damage as the Oklahoma City bomb did. The spread of environmental problems or diseases across national lines -- we are going to have to, in other words, find ways to cooperate, to keep the organized forces of destruction that are taking advantage of the Internet, the technological revolution, the freedom of travel and the freedom of movement, access to computers and moving money around and all that -- there will always be organized forces of destruction. That is fundamentally what is at stake in the stand off we're having in Iraq today. I don't want you to look at this backward through the prism of the Gulf War and think it's a replay. I want you to look at it forward and think about it in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the saran gas was released; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms. And I say this not to frighten you. The world will always have challenges. I think the chances are quite good that we can organize ourselves for this challenge and deal with it very effectively. I personally believe that the next 50 years will be far more peaceful and less dangerous for our children and our grandchildren than the last 50 years were. I also believe they will be the most prosperous and interesting time in all of human history -- but only if we do the right things. ... From: http://library.whitehouse.gov/ThisWeek-plain.cgi ---------- For more on the US ban of assault weapons and the US and Mexico's convention to fight illicit arms trafficking, signed yesterday: http://jya.com/piat111597.htm