Vice President Dick Cheney said that the US must be prepared to fight the War on Terrorism for decades. Speaking to US military personnel at the Association of the US Army in Washington DC, he said that the only way terrorists would win was if the US lost its nerve and abandoned Iraq and the Middle East. "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort, and it will be resisted by those whose only hope for power is through the spread of violence," he said.

The comments come as Democratic senators have warned in a letter to President Bush that continuing on the same path in Iraq could lead to a full-blown civil war. (BBC, Oct. 5; AP, Oct. 6)

See our last post on Iraq, and our recent feature analysis on the virtual inevitability of civil war at this point.