America must fight terrorists because they could destroy Israel, President Bush said. In a long address Thursday to the National Endowment on Democracy, Bush sought to explain a foreign policy that has become bogged down in the Iraq war. Bush cast Iraq as central to his war on terrorism and cited a litany of catastrophic outcomes should terrorists prevail, among them the destruction of Israel. “With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation,” he said.
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