Note: After his town hall meeting Thursday in the Cincinnati Convention Center, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Enquirer Editorial Board for an exclusive question-and-answer session. Here are excerpts from that session.

Q: In Des Moines this week, were you saying if John Kerry is elected, the U.S. homeland is more likely to get hit by a major terrorist attack?

Cheney: One report by AP of what I said cut a sentence in half. A blog site pointed out the AP story was not accurate. I did not say if Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack. Whoever is elected president has to anticipate more attacks. My point was the question before us is: will we have the most effective policy in place to deal with that threat? George Bush will pursue a more effective policy than John Kerry. Look at what we have done and what Kerry has said and the way he voted for 20 years in the Senate.

Q: If the War on Terror requires us to make pre-emptive attacks, how can we reassure our allies we will use that 'Bush doctrine' responsibly and how do we keep aggressive nations from adopting it themselves?

Cheney: I have heard that argument that if we are willing to entertain preemption, others will use it for their own purposes. I don't think somebody out there in the past wanting to entertain preemption said, 'Gee, the U.S. isn't doing it, then I can't do it.' I don't think the argument holds up. The president of the United States has to pursue the strategy he thinks can best defend and secure the nation. We do that when we can on a multilateral basis with the support of others. Allies are always valuable to have for these conflicts, but there are times and occasions when you have to act unilaterally. I would argue we did not act unilaterally in the case of Iraq. We went to the United Nations. The president challenged the UN and said, 'Look for 12 years Saddam Hussein defied UN Security Council resolutions. We had another resolution passed. We rounded up 30 other nations to send troops. So the suggestion that this was 'unilateral' I have never accepted. The French, the Germans, the Russians didn't sign on. True. One of the things I think will happen - I talked with a European recently - who suggested that that terrorist attack in Russia has had a significant impact, although it was not as great on public opinion as 9/11. They have all been operating on the assumption that if you stay out of Iraq you won't get hit. The Spaniards got hit because they went into Iraq. But the Russians didn't go into Iraq and they got hit. There is some sort of reassessment on the part of some in Europe. Some felt in the past Iraq is a U.S. problem. Because of who we are, our role in the Middle East and our strong support of Israel, there is the suggestion that we somehow 'invited' attack. What's increasingly clear is that this is not just targeted at the U.S.

Q: In Cincinnati this week, John Kerry charged that President Bush failed to build a broad, cost-sharing coalition for Iraq. If our allies paid 95 percent of the 1991 Gulf war costs, why are we paying 90 percent of Iraq war costs which Kerry says total $200 billion?

Cheney: I think that $200 billion covers Afghanistan as well. The Gulf war was a different situation. The Iraq war was a different situation. The Gulf War I know a little bit about. I was Secretary of Defense then. The Iraqis had occupied Kuwait and directly threatened Saudi Arabia. Then it was easier to round up commitments financial and otherwise. We had an overt act of aggression across international boundaries by Saddam Hussein against Kuwait. Plus Kuwait paid a big part of the freight. What happened this time around, a lot of other nations contributed forces as part of the coalition. Kuwaitis contributed significantly. They gave us the base we operated out of. They provided a lot of the fuel. We have had a lot of in-kind support. We're involved in a global war on terror and not everyone in the region agrees with what we have to do. I think the big difference is pre-9/11 and post-9/11.

We've had the donors conference. This time around a lot of focus is on the Iraqi debt. Jim Baker went around and got those nations to write a significant portion of the debt owed by the Iraqis. The Iraqi government still has to negotiate with the creditors. A lot of them don't want to reach a final settlement until they can reach agreement with the Iraqi government. I would guess many billions of dollars will be written off, and it's important that that happens in order to free up the new government in Iraq so they can devote their resources to rebuilding the infrastructure in the country. The government of Iraq that incurred those debts is no longer in existence. The Germans and Russians and nations that haven't committed troops have been heavily involved in that.

Q: What do you say to those who argue we should have concentrated on clearing out the Taliban and other terrorists from Afghanistan before taking on Iraq?

Cheney: When you sit where I do and look at the government in Iraq, (interim Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi has been there 60 days, that's not as long as we give the president a transition period in this country. Afghanistan has had more time, but I look at it, sure you can see problems, but I see a nation that had been brutalized by the Taliban for a decade, there were subject to Soviet occupation in 1979, fighting a war against the Soviets until they withdrew, then there was civil war in Afghanistan for close to 10 years after that, the Soviets with hundreds of thousands of troops had not been able to prevail and we went in and in a few weeks with a relative handful of troops took down the Taliban and routed the al-Qaida and destroyed the training camps. We now have in President Hamid Karzai a good man, they have a good constitution, they have registered 10 million souls and will have an election in October in one of the toughest nations on Earth. Forty-one or 42 percent of registered voters are women. It wasn't long ago that Afghan women were some of the most oppressed on the face of the Earth. Look what happened to the Brits there in the 1840s. This is not a hospitable place. It's hard to get to. It's extraordinarily rugged terrain. It's a difficult place to operate in. They've done a phenomenal job in less than three years, and they will have a freely elected, constitutional government for the first time in their history. The central government is still relatively weak, you got the warlords and they got a significant drug problem. Afghanistan is a major source of the poppy crop for heroin and that serves to generate illicit revenues to finance warlords who remain out of the grasp of the central government, but I think on balance we're making significant progress. There is going to be a significant U.S. military presence there for a significant period of time, but I think we doing a pretty good job in standing up the Afghan army. They have been much more active, and a major help to Karzai. Think how long it took us from the time we declared our independence in 1776 and threw off the British yoke until we had a viable constitution It was 13 years. It was 70 years later that we had a little problem we didn't resolve until we had a civil war.

Q: What is the Bush-Cheney campaign doing to assure Middle American families that they can find jobs and raise strong families?

Cheney: I would argue we are addressing those issues. The base you start from is a strong economy, on track, with real growth and disposable income, money increasing 1 to 2 two percent after taxes so they got more take-home pay. I'm sure there are places around the country where some families are going through difficult times because a local plant has moved or closed. I look at it as one of the attributes that goes with having a dynamic economy. If you think about how it's being transformed over time, what percentage of the economy is involved in manufacturing, in agriculture, in services.

We're opening up brand-new industries that didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago. But that involves change. My grandfather went to work for a wagon maker in 1900 just as the automobile was coming in. Bad choice. He had to adjust and did. The key for government is to do everything we can to help with that transformation. It's not to try to lock in the existing economy and prevent change. We want a modern economy, the most modern economy, we want all those new industries and technologies coming here and operating in the United States. That does mean change. Part of what we have to do is make sure we have trade adjustments so when somebody is in an industry or market that is being replaced that we have the financial resources in place so they can get retrained and move on to that next opportunity.

I went through it when I was a congressman from Wyoming. Our economy was heavily energy-dependent, and energy prices collapsed and we lost 20 percent of our population. Every fifth person left Wyoming. Those were tough times. People picked up and moved.

My concern is we not fall into a trap and attempt to freeze the existing economy and not allow competition of various kinds. We should let the private sector do what it does so well, which is to create a dynamic economy that makes us unique in the world. Government's obligation is to help people make that transition with retraining, more and better education, loans to start a small business, whatever it might be. In health care, the approach we have taken includes medical savings accounts which are portable when you move from one job to another. That is more suited to the kind of dynamic society we have and will have in the future than some of the more conventional approaches Sen. Kerry is suggesting.