US President George W. Bush on Tuesday promised fresh proof next week of Iraq's "utter contempt" for peaceful disarmament and vowed to use overwhelming force to triumph in any war against Saddam Hussein.
In a pugnacious State of the Union address, Bush worked to break mounting doubts at home about his ability to steady the US economy's wobbly recovery and ease global worries that he is charging heedlessly into conflict with Baghdad.
Bush said US Secretary of State Colin Powell will go before the UN Security Council on Wednesday to detail evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, its efforts to thwart UN inspectors, and its ties to terrorists -- including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, the group behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him," the president warned.
Tackling head-on the argument -- espoused by France, Russia, Germany and others -- that UN inspectors must have more time to scour Iraq for banned weapons, Bush said Saddam's strategies were making a mockery of those efforts.
"The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving," said Bush, who itemized Saddam's alleged offenses and said any US-led war would oust him from power.
Iraqi agents are hiding documents, sanitizing inspections sites, monitoring the UN inspectors, intimidating witnesses, impersonating scientists the inspectors interview, he charged.
"Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate or attack," Bush said.
Reaching beyond a House of Representatives packed with congressmen and senators, the president cautioned the tens of thousands of US troops gathering in the Gulf that "some crucial hours may lie ahead."
He also worked to polish the US image abroad with an AIDS-fighting project worth US$15 billion and labored to shore up his political weak flank by assuring skeptical voters he will bring them prosperity.
"After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and stock market declines our economy is recovering -- yet it is not growing fast enough, or strongly enough," he said. "We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job."
And Bush is eager not to repeat the experience of his father, who came off the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq a hugely popular wartime president only to lose his bid at a second term over his perceived aloofness to economic suffering.
Clouding the president's all-but- announced 2004 reelection campaign, opinion surveys have shown a steadily eroding public confidence in his ability to restore growth at a time when unemployment stubbornly sits at 6 percent.
Looking overseas, Bush pushed the lawmakers to add US$10 billion to an "emergency plan" to combat the spread of AIDS in the hardest-hit areas of the world.
And though bin Laden remains at large, Bush cited progress in the "war on terrorism." A seat near first lady Laura Bush was kept vacant to honor the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Though he declared the specter of "outlaw regimes" such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran arming terrorists with weapons of mass destruction to be the greatest danger to world peace, Bush did not reprise last year's label of those regimes as an "axis of evil."
And he specifically pointed to a secret partnership between Iraq and al-Qaeda as evidence that Saddam's regime cannot be contained.
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