Bernard Kerik Quotes

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.

In order to have defense here at home, we have to have offense in Iraq and Iran.

We have not yet, as a nation, made a generation-long commitment to this terrorist threat.

The President reminded us that the war in Iraq is a central battlefield in the war on terror that began the morning of September the 11th.

So a truthful assessment of how America is doing in the war on terror as a result of President Bush's war on Iraq is that we have been set back by decades.

I oppose the spending of trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, I strongly oppose Islamic extremism but don't believe that sending troops to die in two unwinnable wars makes sense.

This year's Veterans Day celebration is especially significant as our country remains committed to fighting the War on Terror and as brave men and women are heroically defending our homeland.

To win the war on terror, we must know who our friends are and where our enemies are hiding. We can't continue fighting terrorism using the same foreign policy blueprints that were in place before September 11th.

The first weekend after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush had a meeting at Camp David with his top advisors, including Colin Powell, the secretary of state. And there was a lively debate about Iraq policy, in which some people from the Pentagon were arguing that the war against terrorism should include Saddam Hussein.

Yes, what has happened is we have moved from responding to these terrorist attacks as acts of civil disobedience to getting to the point after September 11 that we said, no, this is not just civil disobedience, this is an act of war.

Once upon a time, it might have been possible to deal with Iraq alone, without having to face the murderous forces of the other terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh, but that time has passed. Iraq is a battle, not a war. We have to win the war, and the only way to do that is to bring down the terror masters, and spread freedom throughout the region.

We told the Taliban in no uncertain terms that if this happened, it’s their ass. No difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda now. They both go down.

Unless the president can make a very compelling case that Saddam Hussein has his finger on a weapon of mass destruction and is about ready to use it, I do not think that now is the time to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

The force that we went to war with after 9-11 was a force designed for the Cold War. We have much different needs today.

September 11 will shape our policies for years to come.

Any of these defense initiatives, looked at 10 years later, you end up asking, “Was it worth it?” Look at Vietnam. Look at Iraq 10 years later. Bin Laden, The War on Terror? We spent a trillion dollars over 10 years to put a 50 cent round in this guy’s head. Everybody thinks that’s a huge success. I don’t know.

…The invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake in American history. We invaded a country that was no threat to us…. We have lost so much of our world prestige and world leadership.

Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith was equally insistent in 2002-2003 about an operational relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda.

If we leave Iraq, terrorists will follow us home.

Iraq broke our back in terms of counterterrorism. There's no doubt about it. The first thing, though, that hurt us was the fact that the U.S. military was absolutely unprepared to do anything on 9/11 - or 9/12 or 9/13. And by the time we actually attacked Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban had dispersed.

Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.

There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq, until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq.

The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.

Our goal is to defend the American people, and to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and to liberate the Iraqi people.