Eleftherios Venizelos Quotes

There are a lot of things that have to be considered in National. The military aspect of it is only one of them. I'm confident that President Bush will have all of those things laid out for him before he makes the decision.

As we've seen, deploying large armies abroad won't always be our best offense. Countries typically don't want foreign soldiers in their cities and towns.

It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis.

Our national aims can be realized only by military means. The matter needs no further elaboration or interpretation.

The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene. It is up to the civilians to tell us what they want to do and we’ll figure out how to do it.

No American witnessing the way that President George W. Bush and his generals have bungled the Iraq war can deny that our leaders, civilian and military alike, will have to get a lot smarter if the U.S. armed services are to persuade the Islamic world to embrace the blessings of democracy.

Our military knows how to invade and conquer a country, but we do not know how to run one.

In Washington the semantics of the military muted the reality of war for the civilian policy-makers. In quiet, air-conditioned, thick-carpeted rooms, such terms as 'systematic pressure,' 'armed reconnaissance,' 'targets of opportunity,' and even 'body count' seemed to breed a sort of games-theory detachment.

The question really is what action we take which lessens the chances of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure…. You have:, A blockade without any declaration of war A blockade with a declaration of war Strikes One, Two and Three We’ve got invasion

The President has full responsibility, which cannot be shared, for military decisions in a world in which the difference between safety and cataclysm can be a matter of hours or even minutes.

When you are Commander in Chief, you should keep all your options on the table.

The truth is that modern governments sit at the head of a well-funded security apparatus. They are told that foreign military adventures put domestic populations at risk and they give them the thumbs up anyway.

It makes no sense for us to consider going back there and getting involved in what truly is a religious civil war. What real difference would it make on the ground? And secondly, is it in the best interests of the United States to do that? I would say that those questions are not being answered in a compelling way that would cause me to support that.

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

Our safety requires a long-term military presence in the Middle East because that's where the plans to attack us are emanating.

Pat Roberts and I both feel very strongly that when we get to Iran, that we can't make the same mistakes. We have to ask the questions, the hard questions before, not afterwards, and get the right intelligence.

You can’t undo a thousand years of history by sending military troops into a country.

As not infrequently happens in the affairs of war, it is easier to point out mistakes after they are committed, than to see and avoid them amid the difficulties and dangers by which the military commander is at the moment surrounded.

Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter frenzied stages, to a cold and objective appraisal by the best operating talent available, particularly by those not involved in the operation Failure to advise the president, at an appropriate time, that success had become dubious and to recommend that the operation be therefore canceled Failure to recognize that the project had become overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the agency alone

Wars are fought for political considerations. Military victory alone is never enough

This is not going to be decided by public opinion polls. It is a national security issue.

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.