WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush briefed congressional leaders Tuesday on U.S. troop deployments around the globe and scored a diplomatic victory when Saudi Arabia cut its ties with the terrorist-harboring Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. American consumer confidence plunged in the wake of this month's attacks in New York and Washington.
"I think the war aims are clear," House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt said after he and other lawmakers met with Bush at the White House. "In a way, it's meeting guerrilla warfare with guerrilla warfare, but it's also meeting it with financial efforts, and political efforts, and diplomatic efforts," said the Missouri Democrat.
Saudi Arabia's move left Pakistan as the only nation in the world to maintain ties with the Taliban -- and Pakistan has pledged cooperation with the American-led war on terrorism. It leaves Afghanistan's hard-line Islamic regime ever more isolated in its showdown with the United States over Osama bin Laden, the No. 1 suspect in the attacks on the United States that left nearly 7,000 dead or missing.
Separate from Saudi Arabia's move, Russian President Vladimir Putin underlined his country's commitment to an international coalition against terror, calling for the "complete ideological and political isolation" of international terrorists. He spoke in Berlin after meeting with German leaders.
Defiant, bin Laden's al-Qaida organization issued an early morning statement warning Washington against attacks against him or Afghanistan. "Wherever there are Americans and Jews, they will be targeted." The statement was faxed to news organizations in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, in the name of al-Qaida's chief military commander, Naseer Ahmed Mujahed, and released less than 48 hours before the beginning of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews worldwide.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer announced that Bush would travel to Chicago on Thursday to pledge support for the battered airlines industry and urge Americans to resume normal spending practices.
He spoke as the Conference Board in New York was providing fresh evidence that Americans' concerns about an already weakened economy had been redoubled by the attacks. The New York-based business group said its Consumer Confidence Index sank to 97.6 from a revised 114 in August.
At the White House, Gephardt said Bush was taking the right approach in targeting terrorist cells rather than civilians. He said that removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan is not necessarily a goal.
"I don't think it's anybody's goal to topple governments in this," Gephardt said. However, he added, the fact that the Taliban is supportive of bin Laden "gives us real pause, and obviously we'd like to change that position on their part."
Also in the meeting were House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.
The leaders discussed airport security measures, including Gephardt's idea of putting military police or reservists on planes "so that every passenger has a feeling of confidence to go back on the airplanes."
Gephardt said Reagan National Airport outside Washington, the only airport still closed due to the Sept. 11 attacks, could reopen once planes using the airport are equipped with better cockpit doors.
Bush indicated he was more than willing to consider Democratic proposals to extend unemployment and health insurance benefits to airline workers, Gephardt said. "There are some people who don't qualify for unemployment because of their status," he said.
Bush was meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as his country's role in the looming conflict becomes more clear.
Japan will send warships to the Indian Ocean as early as this week to carry out intelligence and surveillance missions, two Japanese newspapers reported. The squadron may accompany the USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier that left its base near Tokyo on Friday, the reports said.
Bush, in a letter to Congress on Monday, broadly outlined how forces already have been deployed in the Middle East and Asian and Pacific regions.
"It is not now possible to predict the scope and duration of these deployments, and the actions necessary to counter the terrorist threat to the United States," Bush wrote in the letter Monday.
In other developments Monday:
Bin Laden tried to rally Pakistani Muslims to combat any attack on Afghanistan, where he is believed to be hiding.
A CBS-New York Times poll found that Bush's handling of the terrorist crisis was supported by 90 percent of those surveyed, and 92 percent expressed backing for U.S. military action in response. At the same time, 78 percent said they believed another terrorist attack was likely in the United States. The survey questioned 1,216 individuals between Sept. 20-23 and had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a two-day ban on flights by crop-dusters, which authorities feared might be used in a chemical or biological attack. A Florida bank president said he had been told that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, tried to get a loan from the U.S. Agriculture Department to buy a crop-duster. USDA is a tenant of the bank, which checked its files about Atta at the request of the FBI.
