John Warner Quotes

Our safety at home and the cause of freedom abroad is largely contingent upon our success in Iraq.

Our military is doing everything it can to equip Iraq's forces so our troops can come home as soon as possible, but we cannot leave until the job is done.

I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.

I watched the Bush administration overreact to the Clinton administration, who believed they did too much nation building, sustaining other countries, and that's why we never put the commitment on Afghanistan and Iraq that should have been in there under their policy leadership.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and coalition partners stands as one of the greatest blunders in American history. The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, rose out of the the chaos, throwing the region into turmoil that hasn't been equaled since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Local Arab partners and the Iraqi government must lead the fight against ISIL. U.S. military advisers are important to this effort, but we cannot be engaged in combat operations. That is why Congress must revoke the previous war authorization and define our appropriate role in defeating ISIL.

There is only one option in Iraq: that we win.

As we continue to make great progress in the war on terror, now more than ever, it is important that members of the international community stand-by and bolster the efforts of the emerging diplomatic leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.

I said that America's role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation, and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners.

Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.

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.

The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular.

We were told this war would be over in a matter of weeks, and that the Iraqis would be able to finance it with oil sales. We were promised it was not a mission of nation building.

The only one who thinks the world is safer since the occupation of Iraq is Bush.

I don't think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that's now history.

We are succeeding in Iraq. Thank you, America.

In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option.

Of course, it's imperative that we stabilize Iraq and quickly reduce our armed role there.

My journalistic mission was straightforward: to await the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nobody knew quite when this would be. But the diplomacy - the meetings in the U.N. security council, the allegations about weapons of mass destruction, the martial language of Tony Blair and George W. Bush - all suggested a war was brewing.

It's very unlikely that we're going to send more troops to Iraq. We are going to have to train the Iraqis faster and harder.

Don't invade Iraq. Inspections work, war won't.

At a time when the insurgents are saying that time is working against them, my Democratic colleagues are introducing a measure to set a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq that will undercut the momentum that the insurgents themselves say we have built in Iraq.

The U.S. Forces are winning in Iraq. It is to be hoped that they will win at home also.