Brent Scowcroft Quotes

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

I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.

I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations.

Taking a principled and consistent stance over Iraq has attracted much criticism from our detractors and opponents.

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.

Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong.

What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States.

Blair overestimated his ability to influence U.S. decisions on Iraq.

Working as a Foreign Office lawyer in 2003, I was less worried by the quibbling over U.N. resolutions on Iraq than the coalition's capacity to effect positive change.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war without knowing what she was doing, I would not have had our people in Iraq. Iraq was disaster.

Regime change has been an American policy under the Clinton administration, and it is the current policy. I support the policy. But regime change in and of itself is not sufficient justification for going to war--particularly unilaterally--unless regime change is the only way to disarm Iraq of the weapons of mass destruction pursuant to the United Nations resolution.

It is high time that the international community tell Saddam Hussein and his regime that this is not an issue of negotiation with the U.N. about obligations that they undertook in 1991.

Let's be clear: Neither Secretary Powell or I opposed the notion of removing Saddam Hussein by force, but we wanted to avoid the war if we could. But if we couldn't, the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from the scene seemed eminently sensible, given that you had, what, 16 or so U.N. Security Council resolutions basically saying the same thing.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

The National Security Council's real role is to coordinate the various activities of the government of the United States in the furtherance of American foreign policy.

I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States.

I did more than anyone else in persuading the U.S. to get rid of Saddam.

We've made some mistakes in this country in times past - the Korean conflict proceeding that, some say proceeding the Persian Gulf War, where we were ambiguous as to what we would do.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

One of the enduring mysteries of America's occupation of Iraq is why a nation that so little relishes peacekeeping nonetheless refuses to turn the job over to the United Nations.

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

First, we could have defied both of them and could have gone to war against both of these nations for this violation of international law and interference with our neutral rights.

If a senator calls me up and asks me what should we do in Iraq, I'm happy to talk to him.