legislation titled Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which was signed on September 18, 2001, by President Bush. It authorized the use of US Armed Forces against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks and those who harbored them. The September 11 terrorist attacks were a major turning point in Bush's presidency. That evening, he addressed the nation from the Oval Office, promising a strong response to the attacks. He also emphasized the need for the nation to come together and comfort the families of the victims. Three days after the attacks, Bush visited Ground Zero and met with Mayor Rudy Giuliani, firefighters, police officers, and volunteers. To much applause, Bush addressed the gathering via a megaphone while standing in a heap of rubble: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." In a September 20, 2001, address to congress, Bush condemned Osama bin Laden and his organization Al-Qaeda, and issued an ultimatum to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was operating, to "hand over the terrorists, or... share in their fate". Writing about changes to the US State Department in the wake of the September 11 attacks in a 2020 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, former Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns and former Assistant Secretary of State Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, "Although the transformation of the State Department into a more expeditionary and agile institution was healthy in many respects, it was also distorting. It was tethered to a fundamentally flawed strategy—one that was too narrowly focused on terrorism and too wrapped up in magical thinking about the United States' supposed power to transform regions and societies." Bush Doctrine After the September 11 attacks, Bush's approval ratings increased tremendously. Bush decided to use his newfound political capital to fundamentally change U.S. foreign policy. He became increasingly focused on the possibility of a hostile country providing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) to terrorist organizations. During his early 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush set forth what has become known as the Bush Doctrine, which held that the United States would implement a policy of preemptive military strikes against nations known to be harboring or aiding a terrorist organization hostile to the United States. Bush outlined what he called the "Axis of Evil", consisting of three nations that, he