US Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that it is almost certain that al-Qaeda networks would attack against US targets again although it is unclear when and where the attacks might occur.
"I think that the prospects of a future attack on the US are almost a certainty," Cheney told "Fox News Sunday." "It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared," he said.
His remarks came after US intelligence and law enforcement officials revealed that a vague yet troubling series of communications among al-Qaeda intercepted over the last few months indicated that the terrorist organization was trying to carry out an operation as big as the September 11 attacks or even bigger.
Cheney said the government is doing everything to prevent the attacks and advised Americans to stay alert. "We've got to do that," he said.
The vice president again defended President George W. Bush for his response to intelligence briefing he received before September 11 that al-Qaeda network might hijack American airplanes.
The president could not have anticipated that terrorists would turn airliners into missiles on September 11, he said, repeating what Bush and his other senior aides have said.
"My assessment ... is that there wasn't anything out there that would have allowed us to predict what was going to happen," he said.
On NBC's "Meet the Press", Cheney said he has "a deep sense of anger" that anyone would suggest that Bush had advance knowledge but failed to act on it, referring to Democrats in Congress who are pressing for investigation into how the Bush administration failed to respond to those intelligence warnings.
(Xinhua News Agency May 20, 2002)
