ATLANTA (REUTERS)–President Bush stepped up his rhetoric against Iraq, Iran and North Korea Thursday and told them to “get their house in order” or face the consequences.
Brushing off a measure of international unease and the three countries’ angry denials that they were seeking weapons of mass destruction to threaten the United States, Bush followed up on a harsh condemnation of what he termed an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.
In that speech, he accused Iran, Iraq and North Korea of seeking weapons of mass destruction to attack or blackmail the United States.
The confrontational tone of Bush’s message prompted unease among some of Washington’s allies, including Britain. Politicians from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ruling Labour Party said Thursday the tough language sat uneasily alongside Britain’s cautious rapprochement with Tehran and Pyongyang.
But Bush, without explicitly mentioning the three countries, kept up his drumbeat of warnings Thursday in a speech to supporters at an Atlanta hotel.
“If you are one of these nations that developed weapons of mass destruction and you’re likely to team up with a terrorist group or are now sponsoring terror, and you don’t hold the values that we hold dear … then you too are on our watch list,” he told supporters at an Atlanta hotel.
“People say, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ It means they better get their house in order, is what it means,” Bush said. “It means they better respect the rule of law. It means they better not try to terrorize America and our friends and allies or the justice of this nation will be served on them as well.”
The White House said Wednesday Bush did not intend to signal imminent military action against Iran, Iraq and North Korea when he singled them out in his Tuesday address.
Rhetoric
But Bush’s unusually harsh rhetoric Thursday left little doubt that he wanted to put those three countries and any others that might threaten the United States on notice.
“My hope, of course, is that nations make the right choice,” Bush said in Atlanta as he wrapped up a two-day, post-State of the Union tour of the South.
“Many nations are realizing [that] when we say you’re either with us or against us, we mean it,” Bush said.
“There’s no middle ground when it comes to freedom and terror,” he continued, “and so my hope is that those nations that we put on notice and other nations around the world will make the right choice.
“But they should not make any mistake about it. We will defend our national security. The security of the United States of America is my most important job, and I take it seriously and I will follow through,” Bush said to rising cheers.
Bush came to Atlanta from Daytona Beach, Fla., where he urged Americans to seize the moment presented by Sept. 11 and change the country’s “feel-good” culture.
“Our culture has said, ‘If it feels good, do it,'” he said in a speech at an emergency operations center. “Our dream, or my dream for the country, is that we usher in a culture that says ‘Each of us are responsible for the decisions we make in life.'”
Bush’s reference to a “feel-good” culture referred to contentions that Americans have become too materialistic and excessively worried about themselves. It might also be taken as a slap at his predecessor Bill Clinton, whose eight years in the White House were marred by ethical lapses and sexual scandals.
Bush was on a two-day tour of three southern states, aimed at winning support for his call for 200,000 new volunteers for community service and for every American to give two years–or 4,000 hours–to civic duty. Bush first made the appeal in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.
The effort marked a departure from the president’s early reluctance to ask Americans to sacrifice for the war on terrorism launched after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
In Daytona Beach, Bush made a pitch for the Senior Corps program that encourages people older than 55 to volunteer, saying they might have retired, “but their brains haven’t retired, their experience hasn’t retired.”
