On October 7, 2002, President Bush gave a televised speech which was carried only by cable channels CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel. “Bush’s core argument was that Iraq ‘gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place’ and that, ‘The danger is already significant and grows worse with time…Facing clear evidence of peril,’ he said, ‘we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud…We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril.’ ”
– Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Pages 201-202