By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 June 2023
President George W. Bush said in his first State of the Union speech after 9/11, on 29 January 2002:
Our nation will continue to be steadfast, and patient and persistent in the pursuit of two great objectives. First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans and bring terrorists to justice. … Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. …
North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens. Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom. Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. … This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens …
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
