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Bush Details the Dangers from Iraq
Tuesday, October 8, 2002
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

Bush also addressed the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. He said the United States does not know the extent of the Iraqi effort, "and that's the problem." Before the Gulf War best estimates were it would take Iraq eight to 10 years to develop a nuclear weapon. After the war, however, inspectors learned Iraq had been only six months to two years from having a weapon. Bush said the evidence is that Hussein has reconstituted the nuclear program and that he has met several times with nuclear scientists he calls his "nuclear Mujahedin."

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
President Bush last night clearly answered the questions Americans have raised about the danger Saddam Hussein's Iraq poses to the world.

"The threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place, Bush said during a nationally broadcast speech in Cincinnati. "By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of the regime, Iraq is unique."

The president called Hussein "a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction." The danger is not just that Iraq may use weapons of mass destruction against its neighbors and the United States, but that it may give these weapons to terrorist groups.

Bush said the danger Iraq poses will only get larger with time, and that it doesn't make sense to allow Hussein to perfect or build more arms before stopping him.

In 1995, the Iraqi regime admitted to stockpiling more than 30,000 liters of the biological weapon anthrax. "This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for and is capable of killing millions," Bush said.

Iraq also has chemical agents and has used them on Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 and against its own people. Bush said that the attacks killed or injured more than 20,000 people.
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan