quality:corruption, structural:reformatting
War on terror

In Bush's September 20 speech, he declared that "our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there." In his January 29, 2002 State of the Union Address, he asserted that an " axis of evil " consisting of North Korea, Iran, and Ba'athist Iraq was "arming to threaten the peace of the world" and "pose a grave and growing danger". The Bush Administration asserted both a right and the intention to wage preemptive war, or preventive war. This became the basis for the Bush Doctrine which weakened the unprecedented levels of international and domestic support for the United States which had followed the September 11 attacks.

Dissent and criticism of Bush's leadership in the War on Terror increased as the war in Iraq continued. The Iraq war sparked many protests and riots in different parts of the world. In 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the Iraq War had become the " cause célèbre for jihadists ".