And finally, excerpts from Bush's speech to the UN in Sept. 2002:
We created a United Nations Security Council so that, unlike the League of Nations, our deliberations would be more than talk, our resolutions would be more than wishes.
After generations of deceitful dictators and broken treaties and squandered lives, we've dedicated ourselves to standards of human dignity shared by all and to a system of security defended by all.
Today, these standards and this security are challenged.
Our commitment to human dignity is challenged by persistent poverty and raging disease.
The suffering is great. And our responsibilities are clear. The United States is joining with the world to supply aid where it reaches people and lifts up lives, to extend trade and the prosperity it brings, and to bring medical care where it is desperately needed.
As a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to Unesco.
This organization has been reformed, and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning.
Our common security is challenged by regional conflicts, ethnic and religious strife that is ancient, but not inevitable.
In one place and one regime, we find all these dangers in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront.
Twelve years ago, Iraq invaded Kuwait without provocation. And the regime's forces were poised to continue their march to seize other countries and their resources.
Had Saddam Hussein been appeased instead of stopped, he would have endangered the peace and stability of the world.
Yet this aggression was stopped by the might of coalition forces and the will of the United Nations.
To suspend hostilities, to spare himself, Iraq's dictator accepted a series of commitments. The terms were clear to him and to all, and he agreed to prove he is complying with every one of those obligations.
He has proven instead only his contempt for the United Nations and for all his pledges. By breaking every pledge, by his deceptions and by his cruelties, Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself.
In 1991, Security Council Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease at once the repression of its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities, which the council said threatened international peace and security in the region.
This demand goes ignored.
Last year, the UN Commission on Human Rights found that Iraq continues to commit extremely grave violations of human rights and that the regime's repression is all-pervasive.
Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape.
Wives are tortured in front of their husbands; children in the presence of their parents; and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state.
In 1991, the UN Security Council, through Resolutions 686 and 687, demanded that Iraq return all prisoners from Kuwait and other lands. Iraq's regime agreed. It broke this promise.
Last year, the Secretary General's high-level coordinator for this issue reported that Kuwaiti, Saudi, Indian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Bahraini and Armeni nationals remain unaccounted for; more than 600 people.
One American pilot is among them.
In 1991, the UN Security Council through Resolution 687 demanded that Iraq renounce all involvement with terrorism and permit no terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq.
Iraq's regime agreed but broke this promise.
In violation of Security Council Resolution 1373, Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel and Western governments. Iraqi dissidents abroad are targeted for murder.
In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the Emir of Kuwait and a former American president.
Iraq's government openly praised the attacks of 11 September. And al-Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq.
In 1991, the Iraqi regime agreed to destroy and stop developing all weapons of mass destruction and long range missiles and to prove to the world it has done so by complying with rigorous inspections.
Iraq has broken every aspect of this fundamental pledge.
Delegates to the General Assembly, we have been more than patient. We've tried sanctions. We've tried the carrot of oil-for-food and the stick of coalition military strikes.
All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment.
Are Security Council resolutions to be honoured and enforced or cast aside without consequence?
Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding or will it be irrelevant?
The United States help found the United Nations. We want the United Nations to be effective and respectful and successful.
We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced. And right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime.
Our partnership of nations can meet the test before us by making clear what we now expect of the Iraqi regime.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it - as all states are required to do by UN Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmens and others - again, as required by Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown.
It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues as required by Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program.
It will accept UN administration of funds from that program to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq and it could open the prospect of the United Nations helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis, a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty and internationally supervised elections.
The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. They've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause and a great strategic goal.
The people of Iraq deserve it. The security of all nations requires it.
Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest. And open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder.
The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq.
We can harbour no illusions, and that's important today to remember.
Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. He's fired ballistic missiles at Iran and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel.
His regime once ordered the killing of every person between the ages of 15 and 70 in certain Kurdish villages in northern Iraq.
He has gassed many Iranians and 40 Iraqi villages.
My nation will work with the UN Security Council to meet our common challenge.
If Iraq's regime defies us again, the world must move deliberately, decisively to hold Iraq to account.
We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions.
But the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced, the just demands of peace and security will be met or action will be unavoidable and a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.
Events can turn in one of two ways. If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission.
The regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbours, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear.
If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future.
The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world.
These nations can show by their example that honest government and respect for women and the great Islamic tradition of learning can triumph in the Middle East and beyond.
And we will show that the promise of the United Nations can be fulfilled in our time.
Neither of these outcomes is certain. Both have been set before us.
We must choose between a world of fear and a world of progress.
We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind.
By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.
And, delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand, as well.
