Bush's Speech

Bush gave an excellent and important speech yesterday. Here is an excerpt.

Over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Jordan for potential takeover.

They achieved their goal for a time in Afghanistan. Now they've set their sights on Iraq.

Bin Laden has stated the whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries: It's either victory and glory or misery and humiliation.

The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity, and we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.

Third, the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.

With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation.

Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme and they should not be dismissed.

Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, "We will either we achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life."

And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.

Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.