George W. Bush Quotes

Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake.

I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place

We don't have enough American troops inside of Iraq to destroy ISIL any time soon.

In response to the escalating violence in Iraq, President Bush is delaying the return home of 25,000 troops and will actually add reinforcements to the south. Then in a symbolic gesture he pulled down the mission accomplished banner, put on a flight suit, walked backwards to a jet fighter and flew it in reverse off an aircraft carrier.

The administration does not agree with those who suggest we should deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to engage militarily in a ground war in Iraq.

President Obama is sending a couple hundred troops to Iraq. We spent six years trying to figure a way to get out of Iraq. And now we're back. But this time there is an exit strategy. Barack Obama has an exit strategy. In 2016, he's gone.

I would have troops where they’re wanted, in our bases in Kuwait. I would have a contingency in case of an international terrorist attack. Our involvement in Iraq has led us to fail to focus on the true threat, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan... It was a mistake.

I agree with the president [Barack Obama]. I've said myself, we will not send American combat troops back to either Syria or Iraq - that is off the table.

I think Barack Obama has the overall right strategy and he's been right to resist bringing in massive numbers of American troops. The Iraqis would love to have Americans die for Iraq and the Syrians would love to have Americans die for Syria.

I mean, of course that's a theoretical question, and we don't know what it would be for, and we don't know how many numbers there are. I am against American combat troops being in Syria and Iraq.

Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.

Obama's decision to leave, to not sustain the victory that resulted after eight years of fighting, from 2003 to 2011 in Iraq, was another incredibly stupid decision. It was totally based on politics, not based on any notion of national security. It's a nightmare for our national security. And then you have the Libya intervention.

As far as I'm concerned there shouldn't be a single boot on the ground. There's enough American blood in Iraq that lasts forever.

I'm going to vote in support of the president of the United States in keeping the troops in Iraq until the president and our military is convinced that the mission is complete.

Our military commanders have said over and over again that a timetable for withdrawal sends the wrong message to our troops, but more importantly to our enemy.

We have to go in and win this war quickly, and then be prepared to help stabilize Iraq over an indefinite period, five to ten years, at a minimum, I believe, using a large fraction of American forces. This is a major undertaking that likely would require a total of 150,000 troops and could stay above 100,000 for several years

In practice, the U.K.'s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces.

Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.

I’ve been calling for more troops for over two years, along with John McCain and others subsequent to my saying that.

Democrats proposing failure in Iraq by withdrawing.

George W. Bush made the agreement about when American troops would leave Iraq, not Barack Obama.

I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately.

I would not have had our troops in Iraq.

We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we're not putting ground troops into Syria. We're going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops.

The president made clear when he was a candidate for this office and when he took this office, that unfortunately prior to his taking office, because of the focus on Iraq, and the U.S. efforts there, that the original war, if you will, in Afghanistan had been neglected, the strategy there was unclear, and that it was not properly resourced.