In a speech at the Pentagon on February 17, 1998, President Bill “Clinton warned of the ‘predators of the twenty-first century’ and once again raised the possibility of the ‘reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals.’ ‘They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us… Now let us imagine the future. What if he fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will–its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arti–an arsenal of devastating destruction. And someday, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal… In this century, we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination and, when necessary, action. In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now–a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.’ ”
– Stephen F. Hayes, The Connection, Pages 99-100