We needed to go back on the offense and offer clear leadership on Iraq.

Our policies toward Iraq simply are to protect the region and to protect Iraq’s people and neighbors.

So I think, if September 11 taught us anything, it taught us that we’re vulnerable, and vulnerable in ways that we didn’t fully understand.

We know that there are unaccounted-for Scud and other ballistic missiles in Iraq. And part of the problem is that, since 1998, there has been no way to even get minimal information about those programs except through intelligence means.

We’ve been a country that’s been fortunate to be protected by two oceans, to not have serious attacks on our territory for most of our history. And we were unfortunately reminded in a very devastating way of our vulnerability.

But the truth of the matter is, we’re an open society, we want to remain an open society, and there will continue to be vulnerability. That’s why we have to meet the threats when they are not yet taking place on our territory and on our soil.

We need a common enemy to unite us.

It is high time that the international community tell Saddam Hussein and his regime that this is not an issue of negotiation with the U.N. about obligations that they undertook in 1991.

Now, al Qaeda’s on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people.

It has been, after all, 11 years, more than a decade now, of defiance of U.N. resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Every obligation that he signed onto after the Gulf War, so that he would not be a threat to peace and security, he has ignored and flaunted.

Does anybody think these people were just sitting around drinking tea?

We will continue to work together in our common fight against terror.

Any time you have a situation in which you are calling for more time rather than calling for Iraq to immediately comply, it plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein.

We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

I don’t think anybody can take the word of Saddam Hussein and his regime, and certainly an American president and allies who are obligated to worry about the safety and security of our countries, cannot take the word of this dictator, who lies, pathologically lies.

The people of the Middle East share the desire for freedom. We have an opportunity – and an obligation – to help them turn this desire into reality.

We needed to go back on the offense and offer clear leadership on Iraq.

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

We’re in a new world. We’re in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn’t act.

Success is not assured, but America is resolute: this is the best chance for peace we are likely to see for some years to come – and we are acting to help Israelis and Palestinians seize this chance.

There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 11 September attacks. There was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.

There’s no doubt that it’s still a dangerous place, Afghanistan. The fortunate thing is that the United States was helping to provide security for Chairman Karzai. And it shows that the United States is committed to that regime.

But I want to just caution, it is not incumbent on the United States to prove that Saddam Hussein is trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He’s already demonstrated that he’s trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Well, there’s been plenty of ultimatums, and one thing that we better be very clear is that we can’t continue to have the kind of defiance of the United Nations, the defiance of the international community that we’ve had.