WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States still faces enemies that could inflict hundreds of thousands of American deaths in a single day, and he defended the Iraq invasion as a critical strike against such terror. The vice president said, "The ultimate nightmare could bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced. "Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in a single day of war," Cheney said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/10/11/cheney_defends_us_handling_of_iraq/