[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 41 (Monday, March 29, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3280-S3283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ DEBATE
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have listened to the debate that has
been swirling around the country with respect to Iraq. The debate comes
up again with respect to the commission which is currently meeting.
I cannot respond to all of the specifics that come along. I am
tempted to, but I will not because I want to spend the time that is
allotted to me by setting the total record before those who might be
listening so we can understand that many of the original statements or
original positions with respect to Iraq that are being repeated over
and over again are, in fact, false.
I remember our colleague across the aisle, the late Senator Moynihan
from New York, one of my dear friends and one of the Senators for whom
I have the highest regard, quoted something. He probably didn't think
of it himself, but it was more or less his mantra, as he said to me:
``Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.''
We keep hearing things said over and over again with respect to the
war in Iraq as if they were fact. It is time to set the overall record
straight.
We heard one statement that there was absolutely no connection
between 9/11 and Iraq. The other one we hear over and over again is the
reason we went into Iraq is because we thought Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction. Some make it a little more stark than
that.
There was a group that marched on the Utah State Legislature wearing
T-shirts that said, ``Bush Lied To Us. There Were No WMDs,'' as if the
President of the United States George W. Bush himself alone was the
only authority for the notion that there were weapons of mass
destruction; and, once again repeating the false position that the only
reason we went into Iraq is because we believed they had weapons of
mass destruction.
To quote another individual not nearly as well known as Pat Moynihan
but my high school history teacher, she would always say to us, ``You
cannot cut the seamless web of history.'' I want to take this
opportunity to lay out the whole seamless web of the history of
terrorism and do our best to understand it so we can realize the first
statement that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 and the
second statement that the only reason we went in is because Bush lied
to us about weapons there, are not true. And I hope we can get the
dialog back to the facts.
I am distressed at what has happened to the dialog on this issue. I
must comment. On television was the former Vice President of the United
States with his hand with a clenched fist raised, the blood vessels
standing out on his neck, screaming at the top of his voice, speaking
of the President, ``He has betrayed this country.''
To say the President has betrayed his country is to accuse him of
treason, which is one of the crimes specifically listed in the
Constitution as an impeachable offense. We have not heard that kind of
rhetoric from a politician as highly placed as Al Gore since the 1950s.
And the politician who used to speak like that was a member of this
Chamber. His name was Joe McCarthy, and the President whom he accused
of treason was Harry Truman.
Let us step away from that kind of rhetoric in this debate and review
the facts.
I had the opportunity of attending the Kissinger Lecture at the
Library of Congress which was given by George Shultz, former Secretary
of State. It was one of the most cogent and lucid statements of where
we are with respect to the war on terror I have ever heard. An update
of that appeared in today's Wall Street Journal. I would like to quote
from that those points which address the issues I have talked about,
and ask unanimous consent that the entire piece be printed in the
Record following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1).
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, former Secretary of State George Shultz
begins with this comment:
We have struggled with terrorism for a long time. In the
Reagan administration, I was a hawk on the subject. I said
terrorism is a big problem, a different problem and we have
to take forceful action against it. Fortunately, Ronald
Reagan agreed with me but not many others did. [Don Rumsfeld
was an outspoken exception.]
Twenty-five years ago, it was on the radar screen of an American
administration--in this case one headed by Ronald Reagan--that
terrorism was a problem.
Secretary Shultz goes on to discuss this and then makes this comment:
Today, looking back on the past quarter century of
terrorism, we can see that it is the method of choice of an
extensive, internationally connected ideological movement
dedicated to the destruction of our international system of
cooperation and progress. We can see that the 1981
assassination of President Anwar Sadat, the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center, the 2001 destruction of the Twin
Towers, the bombs on the trains in Madrid, and scores of
other terrorist attacks in between and in many countries,
were carried out by one part or another of this movement. And
the movement is connected to states that develop awesome
weaponry, with some of it, or with expertise, for sale.
Let me emphasize that last sentence again. Speaking of international
terrorism that was involved in all of these things, going back to the
assassination of Sadat in 1981, he says:
And the movement is connected to states that develop
awesome weaponry, with some of it, or with expertise, for
sale.
All right. Do we have an example of such a state that has developed
awesome weaponry that may be for sale? Yes.
Quoting again from Secretary Shultz, he speaks directly of Saddam
Hussein and Iraq. He adds to this Kim Jong Il of North Korea, and then
says:
They seize control of state power and use that power to
enhance their wealth, consolidate their rule and develop
their weaponry. As they do this, and as they violate the laws
and principles of the international system, they at the same
time claim its privileges and immunities, such as the
principle of non-intervention into the internal affairs of a
legitimate sovereign state. For decades these thugs have
gotten away with it. And the leading nations of the world
have let them get away with it.
Yes, we have heard much on this floor about America must not invade
another sovereign state. That is precisely what Secretary Shultz is
talking about when he says, these states that develop awesome weaponry
and cooperate with terrorism for the purpose of
[[Page S3281]]
upsetting the international order, then claim the immunities of the
international order for themselves--as he says: ``such as the principle
of non-intervention into the internal affairs of a legitimate sovereign
state.''
He goes on to summarize all that happened in Iraq. And again, those
who will read the entire piece as it appears following my statement can
get all of those details. But after he recites the details of what
Saddam Hussein has done, he turns to David Kay, the man who is quoted
again and again as the authority for the statement on the T-shirt that
says: ``Bush Lied To Us.''
Well, let's see what David Kay really said. I said in my previous
statement David Kay told this Congress, testifying before the Armed
Services Committee, that Saddam Hussein was, in fact, more dangerous
than we thought when we started the war. But these are the portions of
David Kay's position Secretary Shultz chooses to highlight, and I think
they are the right ones to bring out.
Quoting again:
As Dr. David Kay put it in a Feb. 1 interview with Chris
Wallace, ``We know there were terrorist groups in state still
seeking WMD capability. Iraq, although I found no weapons,
had tremendous capabilities in this area. A marketplace
phenomena was about to occur, if it did not occur; sellers
meeting buyers. And I think that would have been very
dangerous if the war had not intervened.''
Sellers of what? Buyers of what? Who would the sellers be? Who would
the buyers be? The sellers, obviously, would be the Iraqis. The buyers
would be the terrorists. And what are we talking about?
Back to Secretary Shultz:
When asked by Mr. Wallace what the sellers could have sold
if they didn't have actual weapons, Mr. Kay said: ``The
knowledge of how to make them, the knowledge of how to make
small amounts, which is, after all, mostly what terrorists
want. They don't want battlefield amounts of weapons. No,
Iraq remained a very dangerous place in terms of WMD
capabilities, even though we found no large stockpiles of
weapons.''
Just think about that for a second: the knowledge to make them.
If I could give a very homely example, last week my wife and I were
celebrity chefs at the March of Dimes gala, and we won a prize, and
people all said: Is this an old family recipe? We had to admit, no, we
called a chef in Salt Lake City at one of the finest restaurants there,
who happens to work as a judge at these kinds of celebrity cook-ins,
and he gave us a recipe he thought would win. We have been celebrity
chefs four times. We have called him all four times. We have won three
out of four.
The capacity to tell somebody how to make something will produce that
something just as much as having that something yourself. This chef did
not participate, but his recipes participated, and his recipes won. All
we had to do was be the willing buyers in the case; and he was the
willing seller. I will add, just for the record, no money changed hands
with respect to the recipe. But the example is there, and that is what
David Kay is talking about.
Going back to Secretary Shultz, he says:
. . . in the long run, the most important aspect of the Iraq
war will be what it means for the integrity of the
international system and for the effort to deal effectively
with terrorism. The stakes are huge and the terrorists know
that as well as we do. That is the reason for their tactic of
violence in Iraq. And that is why, for us and for our allies,
failure is not an option. The message is that the U.S. and
others in the world who recognize the need to sustain our
international system will no longer quietly acquiesce in the
take-over of states by lawless dictators who then carry on
their depredations--including the development of awesome
weapons for threats, use, or sale--behind the shield of
protection that statehood provides. If you are one of these
criminals in charge of a state, you no longer should expect
to be allowed to be inside the system at the same time that
you are a deadly enemy of it.
Secretary Shultz concludes his piece with this comment:
If we put this in terms of World War II, we are now
sometime around 1937. In the 1930s, the world failed to do
what it needed to do to head off a world war. Appeasement
never works. Today we are in action. We must not flinch. With
a powerful interplay of strength and diplomacy, we can win
this war.
Put it in context, put it in the historic pattern, and we realize
this is all connected and that the action with respect to Iraq was a
very proper, significant, indeed, essential part of the overall war on
terrorism. If we had not moved ahead, we would have been irresponsible.
The summary is in the callout that is put in the paper that says:
The U.S. had no choice: We had to oust Saddam Hussein, or
face the gravest threat.
Mr. President, may I ask how much time I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 4\1/2\ minutes.
Mr. BENNETT. If I might use that 4\1/2\ minutes, then, to address the
fundamental question of the future nobody talks about. We are spending
all of this time rehashing the past. Here is the fundamental question
of the future: What happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction? The assumption raised by the statement that ``Bush lied to
us about the weapons'' is that the weapons never existed.
Well, the first person to convince me the weapons existed was
Madeleine Albright. The first President to tell me the weapons existed
was William Jefferson Clinton.
The first group that insisted weapons were there was working for the
United Nations. This was not a partisan thing put together by George W.
Bush. The weapons were clearly in Iraq, and the question is not why
didn't Bush tell us the truth about them; the question is, what
happened to them? That is the question we need to address. That is the
question of the future we are ignoring in all of this debate about who
said what at what point in the past.
As I see it, there are four possibilities of what happened to the
weapons Saddam Hussein had. No. 1, we got them all in the bombing in
1998. We must remember, as we try to truncate the history, the war in
Iraq began in 1991. The U.N. resolution that called for the war was
never suspended. It was renewed with acts of war in 1998. A heavy 4-day
period of solid bombing is an act of war. President Clinton carried
that out with the approval of this Congress. So the first possibility
is that bombing destroyed all of the weapons of mass destruction.
The second possibility, Saddam Hussein himself dismantled his
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in an effort to convince the
U.N. inspectors they were not there so the inspectors would leave him
alone and he could go back to building them after the inspectors were
gone. There is some suggestion that was in fact what happened, that he
did not intend to disarm, as U.N. Resolution 1441 required he do. All
he intended to do was deceive, and that is where the weapons went.
Possibility No. 3, they were trucked over the border. Some of them
got into Syria or other places and into the hands of others who still
have them.
And possibility No. 4, they are still in Iraq and we simply have not
found them. When people ask me, which of these four possibilities do
you think is the most likely, I say: All of the above. I believe we
destroyed a good portion of his weapons in the 1998 bombing. I believe
he himself dismantled others in a deliberate attempt to deceive the
U.N. inspectors. I believe some of them did get out of the country and
are in the hands of other bad actors somewhere. And I believe there are
probably still some hidden away somewhere in the desert in Iraq.
Unless the first answer is the only one that is correct and they were
all destroyed in the bombing, they are still around somewhere. The
capacity to build them was still around, as David Kay pointed out,
before we went in and removed that.
If there are some of them still around, why aren't we looking for
them? Why aren't we paying attention to where they might be? I believe
the American military is still on the alert for them. I believe the
American intelligence community is still looking to where they might
be. But in the debate we have here on the Senate floor, this question
is never raised. It is never given any attention. Instead we spend all
of our time looking backward and trying to assign blame instead of
looking forward and trying to solve problems.
I commend Secretary Shultz's presentation to all. It is a clear
historic perspective over a quarter century from one of our senior
statesmen that makes it clear the rhetoric surrounding this issue has
been inappropriate and focused on the wrong thing.
I yield the floor.
[[Page S3282]]
Exhibit 1
[From the Asian Wall Street Journal, Mar. 29, 2004]
An Essential War
(By George P. Shultz)
We have struggled with terrorism for a long time. In the
Reagan administration, I was a hawk on the subject. I said
terrorism is a big problem, a different problem, and we have
to take forceful action against it. Fortunately, Ronald
Reagan agreed with me, but not many others did. (Don Rumsfeld
was an outspoken exception).
In those days we focused on how to defend against
terrorism. We reinforced our embassies and increased out
intelligence effort. We thought we made some progress. We
established the legal basis for holding states responsible
for using terrorists to attack Americans anywhere. Through
intelligence, we did abort many potential terrorist acts. But
we didn't really understand what motivated the terrorists or
what they were out to do.
In the 1990s, the problem began to appear even more
menacing. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were well known, but
the nature of the terror threat was not yet comprehended and
our efforts to combat it were ineffective. Diplomacy without
much force was tried. Terrorism was regarded as a law
enforcement problem and terrorists as criminals. Some were
arrested and put on trial. Early last year, a judge finally
allowed the verdict to stand for one of those convicted in
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Ten years! Terrorism is
not a matter that can be left to law enforcement, with its
deliberative process, built-in delays, and safeguards that
may let the prisoner go free on procedural grounds.
Today, looking back on the past quarter century of
terrorism, we can see that it is the method of choice of an
extensive, internationally connected ideological movement
dedicated to the destruction of our international system of
cooperation and progress. We can see that the 1981
assassination of President Anwar Sadat, the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center, the 2001 destruction of the Twin
Towers, the bombs on the trains in Madrid, and scores of
other terrorist attacks in between and in many countries,
were carried out by one part or another of this movement. And
the movement is connected to states that develop awesome
weaponry, with some of it, or with expertise, for sale.
What should we do? First and foremost, shore up the state
system.
The world has worked for three centuries with the sovereign
state as the basic operating entity, presumably accountable
to its citizens and responsible for their well-being. In this
system, states also interact with each other--bilaterlly or
multilaterally--to accomplish ends that transcend their
borders. They create international organizations to serve
their ends, not govern them.
Increasingly, the state system has been eroding. Terrorists
have exploited this weakness by burrowing into the state
system in order to attack it. While the state system weakens,
no replacement is in sight that can perform the essential
functions of establishing an orderly and lawful society,
protecting essential freedoms, providing a framework for
fruitful economic activity, contributing to effective
international cooperation, and providing for the common
defense.
I see our great task as restoring the vitality of the state
system within the framework of a world of opportunity, and
with aspirations for a world of states that recognize
accountability for human freedom and dignity.
All established states should stands up to their
responsibilities in the fight against our common enemy,
terror; be a helpful partner in economic and political
development; and take care that international organizations
work for their member states, not the other way around. When
they do, they deserve respect and help to make them work
successfully.
The civilized world has a common stake in defeating the
terrorists. We now call this what it is: a War on Terrorism.
In war, you have to act on both offense and defense. You have
to hit the enemy before the enemy hits you. The diplomacy of
incentives, containment, deterrence and prevention are all
made more effective by the demonstrated possibility of
forceful preemption. Strength and diplomacy go together. They
are not alternatives; they are complements. You work
diplomacy and strength together on a grand and strategic
scale and on an operational and tactical level. But if you
deny yourself the option of forceful preemption, you
diminish the effectiveness of your diplomatic moves. And,
with the consequences of a terrorist attack as hideous as
they are--witness what just happened in Madrid--the U.S.
must be ready to preempt identified threats. And not at
the last moment, when an attack is imminent and more
difficult to stop, but before the terrorist gets in
position to do irreparable harm.
Over the last decade we have seen large areas of the world
where there is no longer any state authority at all, an ideal
environment for terrorists to plan and train. In the early
1990s we came to realize the significance of a ``failed
state.'' Earlier, people allowed themselves to think that,
for example, an African colony could gain its independence,
be admitted to the U.N. as a member state, and thereafter
remain a sovereign state. Then came Somalia. All government
disappeared. No more sovereignty, no more state. The same was
true in Afghanistan. And who took over? Islamic extremists.
They soon made it clear that they regarded the concept of the
state as an abomination. To them, the very idea of ``the
state'' was un-Islamic. They talked about reviving
traditional forms of pan-Islamic rule with no place for the
state. They were fundamentally, and violently, opposed to the
way the world works, to the international state system.
The United States launched a military campaign to eliminate
the Taliban and al Qaeda's rule over Afghanistan. Now we and
our allies are trying to help Afghanistan become a real state
again and a viable member of the international state system.
Yet there are many other parts of the world where state
authority has collapsed or, within some states, large areas
where the state's authority does not run.
That's one area of danger: places where the state has
vanished. A second area of danger is found in places where
the state has been taken over by criminals or warlords.
Saddam Hussein was one example. Kim Jong Il of North Korea is
another.
They seize control of state power and use that power to
enhance their wealth, consolidate their rule and develop
their weaponry. As they do this, and as they violate the laws
and principles of the international system, they at the same
time claim its privileges and immunities, such as the
principle of non-intervention into the internal affairs of a
legitimate sovereign state. For decades these thugs have
gotten away with it. And the leading nations of the world
have let them get away with it.
This is why the case of Saddam Hussein and Iraq is so
significant. After Saddam Hussein consolidated power, he
started a war against one of his neighbors, Iran, and in the
course of that war he committed war crimes including the use
of chemical weapons, even against his own people.
About 10 years later he started another war against another
one of his neighbors, Kuwait. In the course of doing so he
committed war crimes. He took hostages. He launched missiles
against a third and then a fourth country in the region.
That war was unique in modern times because Saddam totally
eradicated another state, and turned it into ``Province 19''
of Iraq. The aggressors in wars might typically seize some
territory, or occupy the defeated country, or install a
puppet regime; but Saddam sought to wipe out the defeated
state, to erase Kuwait from the map of the world.
That got the world's attention. That's why, at the U.N.,
the votes were wholly in favor of a U.S.-led military
operation--Desert Storm--to throw Saddam out of Kuwait and to
restore Kuwait to its place as a legitimate state in the
international system. There was virtually universal
recognition that those responsible for the international
system of states could not let a state simply be rubbed out.
When Saddam was defeated, in 1991, a cease-fire was put in
place. Then the U.N. Security Council decided that, in order
to prevent him from continuing to start wars and commit
crimes against his own people, he must give up his arsenal of
``weapons of mass destruction.''
Recall the way it was to work. If Saddam cooperated with
U.N. inspectors and produced and facilitated their
destruction, then the cease-fire would be transformed into a
peace agreement ending the state of war between the
international system and Iraq. But if Saddam did not
cooperate, and materially breached his obligations regarding
his weapons of mass destruction, then the original U.N.
Security Council authorization for the use of ``all necessary
force'' against Iraq--an authorization that at the end of
Desert Storm had been suspended but not cancelled--would be
reactivated and Saddam would face another round of the U.S.-
led military action against him. Saddam agreed to this
arrangement.
In the early 1990s, U.N. inspectors found plenty of
materials in the category of weapons of mass destruction and
they dismantled a lot of it. They kept on finding such
weapons, but as the presence of force declined, Saddam's
cooperation declined. He began to play games and to obstruct
the inspection effort.
By 1998 the situation was untenable. Saddam had made
inspections impossible. President Clinton, in February 1998,
declared that Saddam would have to comply with the U.N.
resolutions or face American military force. Kofi Annan flew
to Baghdad and returned with a new promise of cooperation
from Saddam. But Saddam did not cooperate. Congress then
passed the Iraq Liberation Act by a vote of 360 to 38 in the
House of Representatives; the Senate gave its unanimous
consent. Signed into law on October 31, it supported the
renewed use of force against Saddam with the objective of
changing the regime. By this time, he had openly and utterly
rejected the inspections and the U.N. resolutions.
In November 1998, the Security Council passed a resolution
declaring Saddam to be in ``flagrant violation'' of all
resolutions going back to 1991. That meant that the cease-
fire was terminated and the original authorization for the
use of force against Saddam was reactivated. President
Clinton ordered American forces into action in December 1998.
But the U.S. military operation was called off after only
four days--apparently because President Clinton did not feel
able to lead the country in war at a time when he was facing
impeachment.
So inspections stopped. The U.S. ceased to take the lead.
But the inspectors reported
[[Page S3283]]
that as of the end of 1998 Saddam possessed major quantities
of WMDs across a range of categories, and particularly in
chemical and biological weapons and the means of delivering
them by missiles. All the intelligence services of the world
agreed on this.
From that time until late last year, Saddam was left
undisturbed to do what he wished with this arsenal of
weapons. The international system had given up its ability to
monitor and deal with this threat. All through the years
between 1998 and 2002 Saddam continued to act and speak and
to rule Iraq as a rogue state.
President Bush made it clear by 2002, and against the
background of 9/11, that Saddam must be brought into
compliance. It was obvious that the world could not leave
this situation as it was. The U.S. made the decision to
continue to work within the scope of the Security Council
resolutions--a long line of them--to deal with Saddam. After
an extended and excruciating diplomatic effort, the Security
Council late in 2002 passed Resolution 1441, which gave
Saddam one final chance to comply or face military force.
When on December 8, 2002, Iraq produced its required report,
it was clear that Saddam was continuing to play games and to
reject his obligations under international law. His report,
thousands of pages long, did not in any way account for the
remaining weapons of mass destruction that the U.N.
inspectors had reported to be in existence as of the end of
1998. That assessment was widely agreed upon.
That should have been that. But the debate at the U.N. went
on--and on. And as it went on it deteriorated. Instead of the
focus being kept on Iraq and Saddam, France induced others to
regard the problem as one of restraining the U.S.--a position
that seemed to emerge from France's aspirations for greater
influence in Europe and elsewhere. By March of 2003 it was
clear that French diplomacy had resulted in splitting NATO,
the European Union, and the Security Council . . . and
probably convincing Saddam that he would not face the use of
force. The French position, in effect, was to say that Saddam
had begun to show signs of cooperation with the U.N.
resolutions because more than 200,000 American troops were
poised on Iraq's borders ready to strike him; so the U.S.
should just keep its troops poised there for an indeterminate
time to come, until presumably France would instruct us that
we could either withdraw or go into action. This of course
was impossible militarily, politically, and financially.
Where do we stand now? These key points need to be
understood:
There as never been a clearer case of a rogue state using
its privileges of statehood to advance its dictator's
interest in ways that defy and endanger the international
state system.
The international legal case against Saddam--17
resolutions--was unprecedented.
The intelligence services of all involved nations and the
U.N. inspectors over more than a decade all agreed that
Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a
threat to international peace and security.
Saddam had four undisturbed years to augment, conceal,
disperse, otherwise deal with his arsenal.
He used every means to avoid cooperating or explaining what
he has done with them. This refusal in itself was, under the
U.N. resolutions, adequate grounds for resuming the military
operation against him that had been put in abeyance in 1991
pending his compliance.
President Bush, in ordering U.S. forces into action, stated
that we were doing so under U.N. Security Council Resolutions
678 and 687, the original basis for military action against
Saddam Hussein in 1991. Those who criticize the U.S. for
unilateralism should recognize that no nation in the history
of the United Nations has ever engaged in such a sustained
and committed multilateral diplomatic effort to adhere to the
principles of international law and international
organization with the international system. In the end, it
was the U.S. that upheld and acted in accordance with the
U.N. resolutions on Iraq, not those on the Security Council
who tried to stop us.
The question of weapons of mass destruction is just that: a
question that remains to be answered, a mystery that must be
solved. Just as we also must solve the mystery of how Libya
and Iran developed menacing nuclear capability without
detection, of how we were caught unaware of a large and
flourishing black market in nuclear material, and of how we
discovered these developments before they got completely out
of hand and have put in place promising corrective processes.
The question of Iraq's presumed stockpile of weapons will be
answered, but that answer, however it comes out, will not
affect the fully justifiable and necessary action that the
coalition has undertaken to bring an end to Saddam Hussein's
rule over Iraq. As David Kay put it in a February 1 interview
with Chris Wallace, ``We know there were terrorist groups in
state still seeking WMD capability. Iraq, although I found no
weapons, had tremendous capabilities in this area. A
marketplace phenomena was about to occur, if it did not
occur; sellers meeting buyers. And I think that would have
been very dangerous if the war had not intervened.''
When asked by Mr. Wallace what the sellers could have sold
if they didn't have actual weapons, Mr. Kay said: ``The
knowledge of how to make them, the knowledge of how to make
small accounts, which is, after all, mostly what terrorists
want. They don't want battlefield amounts of weapons. No,
Iraq remained a very dangerous place in terms of WMD
capabilities, even though we found no large stockpiles of
weapons.''
Above all, and in the long run, the most important aspect
of the Iraq war will be what it means for the integrity of
the internationals system and for the effort to deal
effectively with terrorism. The stakes are huge and the
terrorists know that as well as we do. That is the reason for
their tactic of violence in Iraq. And that is why, for us and
for our allies, failure is not an option. The message is that
the U.S. and others in the world who recognize the need to
sustain our international system will no longer quietly
acquiesce in the take-over of states by lawless dictators who
then carry on their depredations--including the development
of awesome weapons for threats, use, or sale--behind the
shield of protection that statehood provides. If you are one
of these criminals in charge of a state, you no longer should
expect to be allowed to be inside the system at the same time
that you are a deadly enemy of it.
September 11 forced us to comprehend the extent and danger
of the challenge. We began to act before our enemy was able
to extend and consolidate his network.
If we put this in terms of World War II, we are now
sometime around 1937. In the 1930s, the world failed to do
what it needed to do to head off a world war. Appeasement
never works. Today we are in action. We must not flinch. With
a powerful interplay of strength and diplomacy, we can win
this war.
____________________