I did my 40 years in Washington, 40-plus, and it's time to pause and reflect and think about what I've seen and done.

We now have irrefutable evidence that [Saddam] has once again set up and reconstituted his program to take uranium, to enrich it to sufficiently high grade, so that it will function as the base material as a nuclear weapon. And there's no doubt about the fact that the level of effort has escalated in recent months.

I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.

We urge all democratic nations and the United Nations to answer the Iraqi Governing Council's call for support for the people of Iraq in making the transition to democracy.

I have argued in the past, and would again, if we had been able to pre-empt the attacks of 9/11 would we have done it? And I think absolutely. We have to be prepared now to take the kind of bold action that's being contemplated with respect to Iraq in order to ensure that we don't get hit with a devastating attack when the terrorists' organization gets married up with a rogue state that's willing to provide it with the kinds of deadly capabilities that Saddam Hussein has developed and used over the years.

The issue is that [Saddam] has chemical weapons.

I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent.