[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 38 (Monday, September 23, 2002)]
[Pages 1545-1547]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's Radio Address

September 14, 2002

    Good morning. Today I'm meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio 
Berlusconi about the growing danger posed by Saddam

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Hussein's regime in Iraq and the unique opportunity the U.N. Security 
Council has to confront it.
    I appreciate the Prime Minister's public support for effective 
international action to deal with this danger. The Italian Prime 
Minister joins other concerned world leaders who have called on the 
world to act. Among them, Prime Minister Blair of Great Britain, Prime 
Minister Aznar of Spain, President Kwasniewski of Poland. These leaders 
have reached the same conclusion I have, that Saddam Hussein has made 
the case against himself.
    He has broken every pledge he made to the United Nations and the 
world since his invasion of Kuwait was rolled back in 1991. Sixteen 
times the United Nations Security Council has passed resolutions 
designed to ensure that Iraq does not pose a threat to international 
peace and security. Saddam Hussein has violated every one of these 16 
resolutions, not once but many times.
    Saddam Hussein's regime continues to support terrorist groups and to 
oppress its civilian population. It refuses to account for missing Gulf 
war personnel or to end illicit trade outside the U.N.'s oil-for-food 
program. And although the regime agreed in 1991 to destroy and stop 
developing all weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, it 
has broken every aspect of this fundamental pledge.
    Today, this regime likely maintains stockpiles of chemical and 
biological agents and is improving and expanding facilities capable of 
producing chemical and biological weapons. Today, Saddam Hussein has the 
scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program and has 
illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for 
a nuclear weapon. Should his regime acquire fissile material, it would 
be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.
    The former head of the U.N. team investigating Iraq's weapons of 
mass destruction program, Richard Butler, reached this conclusion after 
years of experience: ``The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the 
nature of the regime itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who 
is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.''
    By supporting terrorist groups, repressing its own people, and 
pursuing weapons of mass destruction in defiance of a decade of U.N. 
resolutions, Saddam Hussein's regime has proven itself a grave and 
gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. 
To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and 
the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must 
not take.
    Saddam Hussein's defiance has confronted the United Nations with a 
difficult and defining moment: Are Security Council resolutions to be 
honored and enforced or cast aside without consequence? Will the United 
Nations serve the purposes of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?
    As the United Nations prepares an effective response to Iraq's 
defense, I also welcome next week's congressional hearings on the 
threats Saddam Hussein's brutal regime poses to our country and the 
entire world. Congress must make it unmistakably clear that when it 
comes to confronting the growing danger posed by Iraq's efforts to 
develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction, the status quo is 
totally unacceptable.
    The issue is straightforward: We must choose between a world of fear 
or a world of progress. We must stand up for our security and for the 
demands of human dignity. By heritage and choice, the United States will 
make that stand. The world community must do so as well.
    Thank you for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 1:05 p.m. on September 13 in the 
Cabinet Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on September 
14. The transcript was made available by the Office of the Press 
Secretary on September 13 but was embargoed for release until the 
broadcast. In his remarks, the President referred to President Saddam 
Hussein of Iraq; Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom; 
President Jose Maria Aznar of Spain; and President Aleksander 
Kwasniewski of Poland. The Office of the Press Secretary also released a 
Spanish language transcript of this address.

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