Washington ? Vice President Dick Cheney argued Friday that critics of the Iraq war advocate a policy of inaction that could risk hundreds of thousands of American deaths in another terrorist attack.

Cheney offered no new evidence that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had posed an imminent threat, as the administration contended before the war. Instead, without drawing a direct link between Saddam and the Sept. 11 attacks, he cast the Iraq invasion as a crucial component of a Bush administration-led battle to prevent even deadlier future attacks.

That strategy would include taking action against governments that could help terrorists gain weapons of mass destruction.

“That possibility, the ultimate nightmare, could bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced,” he said. “Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of horror.”

In a week in which President Bush and White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice also took on the administration’s Iraq critics, first lady Laura Bush added her voice. Speaking Friday to a gathering of female judges who had expected her to talk about heart disease, Mrs. Bush instead focused on the end of Saddam’s rule.

She cautioned that rebuilding Iraq would take time, but said great progress was being made and the country would one day prosper.

“The presence of a peaceful, stable Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a powerful beacon for freedom,” Mrs. Bush said.

Cheney largely ignored the continuing violence around Iraq and the lack of broader international help for the U.S. mission there, mentioning only in passing in a 25-minute speech the “difficulties we knew would occur.”

He offered a point-by-point rebuttal to criticisms:

l A team of U.S. weapons hunters in Iraq led by David Kay has so far found none of the suspected weapons of mass destruction that were a main Bush rationale for war. But Cheney focused on other portions of an interim report from Kay that suggested — but did not provide definitive evidence — that Iraq might have had weapons or weapons programs.

The examples Cheney cited included: the discovery of Iraqi intelligence laboratory and safe houses containing equipment suitable for biological and chemical weapons research; a prison lab complex possibly used to test biological weapons on humans; a vial of live botulinum bacteria stored since 1993 in an Iraqi scientist’s refrigerator that could make a biological weapon but showed no signs of having been used; research on Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, neither considered traditional biological warfare agents; and design work for prohibited long-range missiles.

“Taken together, they … provide a compelling case for the use of force against Saddam Hussein,” Cheney said of the findings. “The United States made our position clear: We could not accept the grave danger of Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us or our friends and allies.”

l Cheney mocked those who have questioned whether the danger from Saddam was as immediate as Bush claimed in prewar days. “As long as George W. Bush is president of the United States, this country will not permit gathering threats to become certain tragedies,” he said.

l Despite some fears that the war stirred up more terrorism than it prevented, Cheney said that both Saddam’s and terrorists’ hostility to America “has long been evident.”

l Cheney also responded to criticism he described as advocating that the United States “may not act without unanimous international consent” when its security is threatened — even though virtually no opponents have taken that position.

“It comes down to a choice between action that assures our security and inaction that allows dangers to grow,” he said. “President Bush declined the course of inaction, and the results are there for all to see.”

Those results, he said, include empty torture chambers, new schools, reopened hospitals, improving infrastructure, progress toward democracy and no danger of an alliance between Saddam and terrorists.