Spencer Cox: “as was so horribly demonstrated on September 11, the greatest threat to our country today comes not from the world's…”

“as was so horribly demonstrated on September 11, the greatest threat to our country today comes not from the world's greatest powers but, rather, from unstable and dangerous individuals scattered across much of the world with nothing more in common than their hatred of the United States. Some of these individuals are itinerant phantoms, like Osama bin Laden. A very few control territory and governments, like Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein. It is for this reason that we are forced to deal with Iraq. It is not merely that Iraq's brutal and ruthless dictatorship is hostile to America, or that it has given comfort to the al Qaeda terrorists, or even that it possesses the most gruesome weapons of mass murder. Beyond all of this, Iraq's barbaric dictator, like the al Qaeda fanatics whom he supports, is unstable and a proven killer. We cannot deal with him or the territory that he controls by terror as if it were a nation state like any other. It is not. Saddam Hussein does not merely possess chemical weapons; he has used them. He does not merely mouth hatred for the United States; it is well known that he attempted to assassinate our President. He does not merely tolerate global terrorism; he is one of its main incubators. We must ask, however, is confronting Saddam Hussein worth the cost that we will surely have to bear if we are required to make good on our threat of force?”