Howard Fineman Quotes

I do not believe, given her past decisions and comments on the reasons to go to war in Iraq, that Dr. Rice will be able to represent the United States without a predetermined bias from the war.

If there is going to be a war – and no one can say that there is not – we must keep him fresh to be our war Prime Minister

There seems to be a sense in the British media that prime ministers enjoy going to war. They do not. The decision to send British soldiers into battle is the worst and most stomach-churning senior politicians have to take. It makes them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying if they have done the right thing.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time?

Presidents do not go into war lightly. It's a tremendous responsibility in making decisions, and I know Bush must deeply believe this is the only course.

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

I believe the military should be wary of diplomacy until war is declared; then the State Department should keep its nose out and let the military do whatever is necessary to win.

War is just one more big government program.

I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.

The president refuses to say… refuses to say that the objective over there is victory.

By invading Iraq, the President has undermined the War on Terrorism.

If this phrase of “the balance of power” is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting …

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

By the time the United States went to war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, I had made three trips to the country. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and have been returning routinely for the past 14 years.

When a decision is made to go to war based on intelligence, it is a fateful decision. It has ramifications and impacts way beyond the current months and years.

We wanted this war and now we've got it, and I'm not sure that we know what to do with it.

It has from the beginning been carried on with as much vigor and as great care of our trade as was consistent with our safety at home and with the circumstances we were in at the beginning of the war.

I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

People have a very political way of looking at war, and that's understandable.

The issue of what my role in the - in persuading the Bush administration to go to war has been greatly exaggerated.