“On January 29, 2002, President Bush delivered his second State of the Union message. …The president called direct attention to Iraq: ‘Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi Regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens–leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections–then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. …I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.’ ”
– Charles Duelfer, Hide and Seek, Pages 199-200