WASHINGTON - New US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Wednesday urged Americans not to live in fear, and acknowledged that "we cannot protect every single person at every moment in every single place."
"We want to live mindfully but we do not want to live fearfully," Chertoff said in an address at George Washington University in Washington.
"We win the war against terror by rejecting terror as a tool of intimidation," Chertoff added. "We triumph when we take account of real threats and real risks but do not become hypersensitive or overly responsive to them."
"The plain truth is that there is no 100-percent guarantee," said Chertoff, a former judge who replaced Tom Ridge at the beginning of the year. "We cannot protect every single person at every moment in every single place."
"What we can do is use intelligent risk-based analysis advanced technology and enhanced resources to manage that risk," he explained.
Chertoff added that the federal government "cannot fund or address all of the risks involved in terrorism on its own. To complete our mission, we must and do count heavily on partnerships with our state and local government colleagues and with the private sector."
03/16/2005 18:27 GMT