The war on terror is less-it is occasionally military, and it will be, and it will continue to be for a long time, and we will need the best trained and the most well equipped and the most capable military, such as we have today.

But it's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world, the very thing this administration is worst at. I will renew our alliances. I will rejoin the community of nations. I will build the kind of cooperative effort that we need in order to be able to win and, most importantly, the war on terror is also an engagement in the Middle East economically, socially, culturally, in a way that we haven't embraced because otherwise we're inviting the clash of civilizations, and I think this administration's arrogant and ideological policy is taking America down a more dangerous path. I will make America safer than they are.

We are now entering into a great national debate about how best to deal with the dangers we face. One side argues that we should treat attacks on our nation by terrorists primarily as matters for law enforcement. That's what the Democratic nominee for President has said, among many other things. John Kerry embraced the strategy of the 1990s, which holds that when we are attacked, we ought to round up the guilty parties and put them on trial.

THOMPSON: In your opinion, would an invasion of Afghanistan, between February of '91, and September of '91, prevented 9/11?

POWELL: I can't answer that, but I can say that those who were perpetrators of 9/11, who were actually going to conduct the attacks of 9/11, already had their instructions, had their plans in place, and they were in the process of infiltrating themselves into the United States, or they were already here. And invading Afghanistan and cutting off the head, if you succeeded in getting Osama bin Laden and disrupting Al Qaida at that point, I have no reason to believe that would have caused them to abort their plans.

THOMPSON: In fact, NATO is in Afghanistan today, and yet everyone who has testified before this commission or been interviewed by this commission still fears that we may yet suffer another attack on our own soil. Is that not correct?

POWELL: That's correct. Al Qaida has tentacles in many different parts of the world. We've been very successful. We've eliminated a significant portion of the senior leadership that we knew about. This does not eliminate the entire organization, and it is not the only organization that means us ill.

I mean I wonder if you see that if you look at from '93 when World Trade Center I was hit the first time and through September of 2001, Al Qaida never suffered a military response from us, never -- other than on August 20th, which was a relatively small military attack, a very limited military attack with absolutely no anticipation of boots on the ground of being involved. And I'm just wondering, I appreciate that I'm asking a question as if you were secretary of defense, secretary of state, national security adviser and perhaps even president, not just secretary of state. But I wonder if you see it that way, as well, that our reluctance to give the secretary of defense and the military a more prominent role in counterterrorism efforts contributed to our lack of preparation.

I suppose that if a terrorism organization were very large or very powerful, it might be necessary to deal with it as if it were a nation. In most situations, however, I think it should be dealt with as a particularly dangerous criminal organization.