"The price of indifference would be catastrophic," President Bush has warned the American people. Mr Bush made clear in his annual State of the Union speech that he would continue the war against terrorists and states which threatened the US and the rest of the world.
"We can't stop now," he said. "If we stop now - leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked - our sense of security would be false and temporary.
"History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight."
Interrupted over 40 times by applause during his State of the Union address,Mr Bush appealed to Americans to be patient and determined to see the war through, and he pointed the finger at three states, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, warning them they were next on America's list of concerns.
It was also a time for marking achievement and celebrating heroes. In the First Lady's box as guests were the palpable evidence of those successes and the virtues which, he said, defined America.There was the new interim leader of Afghanistan, Mr Hamid Karzai, and his Minister for Womens' Affairs, Dr Sima Samar.
On one side of Mr Karzai, a wounded special forces soldier, on the other side of Mrs Laura Bush, the widow of a CIA officer who died in Mazar-e-Shariff. Behind her, the flight attendants, Ms Hermis Moutardier and Ms Christina Jones, whose vigilance stopped the shoe bomber.
One by one they took their bows, punctuation marks for effect in Mr Bush's oration. If it never had the rhetorical flourishes or emotional depth of Mr Bush's September 20th speech to Congress, it was nevertheless the new Bush, confident, unapologetic, driven.
"Even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves - you will not escape the justice of this nation," he told the terrorists.
"We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos, where they laugh about the loss of innocent life. And the depth of their hatred is equalled by the madness of the destruction they design.
"We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world. What we have found in Afghanistan confirms that, far from ending there, our war against terror is only beginning."
Significantly extending the US war aims, Mr Bush said the US was not going to stop at the destruction of al-Qaeda. "We must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world."
He spoke of US forces already active in the Philippines, naval interdiction off the African coast, and arrests in places like Bosnia.
"But some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: if they do not act, America will," he said, warning of the dangers posed by Iran, Iraq, and North Korea who with their terrorist allies constitute "an axis of evil".
By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack US allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic, he warned.
Mr Bush also pledged to help fund education in the Islamic world, to foster what he said were core values underpinning the US approach to the world and the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice; and religious tolerance.
Turning to domestic politics he admitted: to achieve these great national objectives, to win the war, protect the homeland, and revitalise our economy, our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term - adding the deeply political sting, as long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a fiscally responsible manner.
He appealed to Congress to demonstrate the bipartisanship that the war had fostered by passing the deeply controversial legislation now stuck in the Senate - the economic stimulus package with its tax cuts, the energy bill with its proposals to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness, presidential authority to negotiate a new trade round, new aid to faith-based initiatives ... All, he insisted , were ultimately about creating jobs.
Avoiding specific mention of Enron he asked Congress "to enact new safeguards" for 401K [investment accounts] and pension plans.
The full transcript of the address is available at: www.ireland.com/newspaper/special/
