Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were an act of war and promised the United States would respond "as if it is a war." But he emphasized the importance of a long-term, many-sided international struggle to curb terrorist organizations and their alleged state sponsors.
"Let's not think that one single counterattack will rid the world of terrorism of the kind we saw yesterday," Powell said on a private television channel. "This is going to take a multifaceted attack on many dimensions -- diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement. All sort of things have to be done to bring this scourge under control."

Powell said the ultimate problem was "not just one organization, it's a network of organizations."
"We have to make the whole world understand that this is something we all have to be involved in -- and not just see it as a discrete response to a single incident," he said.
"We'll do that. But we have to realize that terrorism has been around for a very long time and it's going to take a very long time to root it out," Powell added.
He said evidence was mounting to indicate who was responsible for hijacking the airliners that destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers in Manhattan and punched a gaping hole in the Pentagon outside Washington.
The evidence "will point us in the right direction in the not-too-distant future," he said. He declined to say whether the evidence pointed to fugitive Saudi Osama bin Laden, as reported privately by other U.S. officials.
Powell said it was premature to suggest that the authors of the attacks on Tuesday had been Islamic fundamentalists. "Let's just identify them as a terrorist group that could have no religious underpinning." Bureau Report