George H.W. Bush: “Well, no. I don't think it was so much as taking the lead but doing our part. As you know, we have a substantial…”

“Well, no. I don't think it was so much as taking the lead but doing our part. As you know, we have a substantial military presence in the area. And my position, and I know it's Cheney's, is we're not ruling anything--or out. When I was talking about substantial presence, I'm talking primarily about the presence of our fleet there. I believe there's two carrier battle groups in the Med, one of them now up in the Adriatic. But nobody should interpret that as other than the fact that we're there. And beyond that, I can't say what we will or won't do. I don't think Cheney was signaling an increased, aggressive military presence there. And I think he'd answer the question the same way I do: that we're not going to rule anything in; we're not going to rule it out. But I would say, we don't want to appear to be kind of, quote, taking the lead, unquote, when all this activity is going on. The French have been active, the Italians at the EC were very forward leaning and active, and that's good. As far as we're concerned, that's fine. Japanese Constitution”