Bush gives nation a choice

"Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq," Bush said. "Objections to war often come from principled motives. But let us be candid about the consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power."

Had his administration failed to act, the president said, "the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."

Bush did not mention that U.S. inspectors had so far found no actual unconventional weapons, the major stated reason that the administration went to war with Iraq.

A year ago, Bush used his State of the Union address to make the case for military action against Iraq, and devoted large portions of the speech to what he called "a serious and mounting threat to our country" posed by Saddam's illicit weapons.

This year, Bush only briefly mentioned the continuing search by David Kay, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, but did not promise, as he has in the past, that Saddam's weapons would eventually be found.

The president opened his remarks with a lengthy discourse on what he called his administration's achievements in national security, an area where polls show he has an enormous advantage over the Democrats. Bush cited as one of his prime accomplishments the capture in December of Saddam.

"The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell," Bush said.

He devoted the second half of his speech to an area where he is far more vulnerable, the economy, which has lost some 2.5 million jobs since he took office. The president reiterated a number of solutions — including a call to make his trillions of dollars in tax cuts permanent over the next decade — but he offered no major new proposals and did not directly address the criticism that his tax cuts had failed to generate the numbers of new jobs that his administration had promised.

In contrast to the impassioned speeches by Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards in Iowa on Monday night, Bush's demeanor was one of sober gravitas as he sought to portray a mature, experienced leader who had guided the nation through the 9/11 attacks, an accomplishment no Democrat would be able to claim.

In a chamber that was missing the three Democratic senators running for president — Kerry of Massachusetts, Edwards of North Carolina and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who were all in New Hampshire — Bush made no mention of the Democratic primary race that was consuming the nation and his own political advisers.

His goal, his aides said, was to portray himself as so immersed in the serious business of running the nation that he was little concerned with the Democratic fistfights playing out in a frigid corner of the Northeast.