Bush Tells Nation the Threat by Iraq Is ‘Simply Too Great’

Courting public support for his campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, President Bush declared Monday that the Baghdad regime “stands alone” as a threat to America because “it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place.”

“The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time,” Bush warned as he sought to answer skepticism about why he wants to confront Iraq now.

He called Hussein “a murderous tyrant” with “an unrelenting hostility” toward the United States. Asserting that evidence “indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons programs,” Bush said this risk “is simply too great that he will use [weapons of mass destruction] or provide them to a terror network.”

Bush spoke slowly and deliberately to an audience at the Cincinnati Museum Center as he summed up his case for coercing Hussein to rid his country of its suspected weapons of mass destruction or face a possible military attack. In his somber address, which was televised by the cable news stations but not the national networks, he also sought to painstakingly rebut a panoply of what he conceded are “legitimate questions” about such an undertaking.

To a greater degree, Bush sought to tie the Al Qaeda network to Hussein, noting that both “share a common enemy”--America--and that their contacts “go back a decade.” He said some Al Qaeda leaders have fled from Afghanistan to Iraq and that “one very senior Al Qaeda leader” received medical treatment in Baghdad.

The president evoked the image of a nuclear holocaust to stress his sense of urgency--and his determination to prevent Iraq from getting a nuclear device. “We cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” Bush said.

Bush conceded the possibility that a desperate Iraqi regime, “faced with its own demise,” could unleash its weapons of mass destruction. He said Iraq has a fleet of airborne drones capable of delivering biological weapons.

He issued an appeal to Hussein’s generals, urging them to disobey their leader should he give an order to deploy such weapons: “If they do not refuse, they must understand that all war criminals will be pursued and punished.”

Bush’s comments came as Congress prepares to pass a resolution authorizing force against Iraq if Bush determines that diplomatic means to disarm Hussein’s regime have been exhausted. The administration also is pressing the United Nations to adopt a tough resolution that would order Iraq to submit to new weapons inspections.

Bush’s speech also came amid considerable public concern in the United States over a war with Iraq--and its potential economic and geopolitical consequences.

Bush and his top advisors have been aware for some time that, even though most Americans support his goals, many also are deeply troubled by the prospect of starting an armed conflict.

The president delivered his speech exactly a year after his administration launched its military attack on Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in response to last year’s terrorist attacks on America. Although the Taliban were overthrown quickly, Bush has stressed that the worldwide war on the Al Qaeda terrorist network it supported and other terrorist groups is ongoing. And his administration concedes it is uncertain about the fate of Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden.

Bush supporters in Congress hailed the speech as a powerful case for decisive action against Iraq. “President Bush laid out the clear, compelling and overwhelming justification for action to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s terror regime,” said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

But Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, a leading antiwar Democrat, was unmoved: “The administration has failed to make a case for a unilateral and preemptive strike on Iraq. War is simply a failure of diplomacy.”

Moderate California Democratic Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher of Alamo said: “I thought it was a speech he could and should have given six months ago. It was a sober and serious recitation of why Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. He put the focus where the focus belonged from the beginning, which is on disarming him.”

In his speech, Bush asserted that a conflict with Iraq would not detract from the broader war on terrorism. “To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror,” he said.

Bush’s main goal was to answer two central questions: Why Iraq? And why now?

“While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone--because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place,” he said, referring to the weapons of mass destruction widely believed to be in Hussein’s arsenal. The Iraqis have denied they possess such weapons.

“By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique,” Bush said as he reminded his listeners that Hussein previously “has struck other nations without warning.”

The president also recounted in detail, as he did in his Sept. 12 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the history of Iraq’s violations of U.N. resolutions that it had agreed to at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“The time for denying, deceiving and delaying has come to an end,” Bush said. “Saddam Hussein must disarm himself--or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.”

Among the facilities the inspectors dismantled was the still-incomplete Al-Furat Manufacturing Facility, near Baghdad. U.N. reports indicate that it was being built to help mass produce centrifuge machines and to provide facilities for the assembly of a demonstration centrifuge cascade, a type of equipment needed to make weapon-grade uranium.

According to the White House, construction at Al-Furat resumed last year “and the building appears to be operational,” although a tall section at the rear has not been completed. In conjunction with Bush’s speech, the White House released satellite photos taken in December 1998 and last month to show the apparent work.

Although U.S. officials do not know what is inside the building, they have detected a large-scale Iraqi effort to illegally import 60,000 or more aluminum tubes that could be used for centrifuges.

A CIA report issued last week said Iraq’s efforts to procure the tubes is “of special concern” because of their use in a centrifuge enrichment program. Some CIA officials, however, say the tubes are probably intended for a conventional weapon program.

Iraq also has attempted to obtain other key parts of a gas centrifuge system, including vacuum pumps, specialized magnets, anhydrous hydrogen fluoride and fluorine gas, and filament winding and balancing machines.

In invoking the nuclear threat, Bush conceded that the U.S. doesn’t know how close Iraq is to having such a weapon.

But, the president warned, “if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. We have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring.”

Bush called Hussein a “homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.”

The president made clear that he is as worried about Hussein’s biological and chemical weapons as he is about the possibility of Hussein acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Bush said the Iraqi leader possesses “a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for and is capable of killing millions.”

Bush said U.S. intelligence has uncovered evidence that Iraq has “a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles” that can be used to deliver such weapons.

Despite the tough rhetoric aimed at Hussein, Bush held out the possibility of a peaceful resolution to the showdown with Baghdad--provided that Hussein rid himself of chemical and biological weapons.

Referring to the resolution pending before Congress, Bush said its approval “does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.”

That set a somewhat different tone than Bush struck in his U.N. speech, when he said that unless the world organization enforced its many resolutions regarding Iraq, “action will be unavoidable.”

The president was not prepared--just yet, anyway--to deliver a speech on Iraq from the more formal, somber setting of the Oval Office. Instead, he flew to this conservative Ohio River city Monday evening and addressed about 500 guests of the Cincinnati World Affairs Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way.

Bush’s audience listened attentively and interrupted the president with applause only twice--when he said, “We will prevail,” and when he said, “We refuse to live in fear.”

At the United Nations in New York, the Security Council did not meet Monday and was not expected to take up the Iraq issue before midweek at the earliest.

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Times staff writers Bob Drogin, Janet Hook and Tyler Marshall contributed to this report.