Iraq Conflict Quotes

The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs, the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons.

The situation in Iraq was dire at the end of 2006, when President George W. Bush decided to implement the surge and selected me to command it. Indeed, when I returned to Baghdad in early February 2007, I found the conditions there to be even worse than I had expected.

The concern is that Iraq could actually ultimately defeat ISIS, but Iran will have taken over the country, because it will be their military, their boots on the ground controlling the ground.

In the case of Iraq, notwithstanding the violence there at the moment, the very fact that a hideous regime - responsible for genocide, for the use of chemical and biological weapons, aggression against two neighbors - has been removed in itself is a positive development.

It's a sad fact that a lot of those countries who haven't been involved in the war in Iraq have taken far more responsibility for rehoming people displaced by the war than Britain has done.

I think a weakened, fragmented, chaotic Iraq, which could happen if this isn’t done carefully, is more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam is now.

I happen to believe that the preemption school is correct, that the risks of allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire his weapons will only grow with time.

The looting of archeological sites and museums in Iraq particularly has reached industrial proportions.

I think every day we look at the mess of the chaos of the civil war in Iraq, I think every day people become more and more convinced that the war was a mistake. I think we have to learn from the mistakes of our past.

The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq without pausing to ask why. Why is war being dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort?

The situation in Iraq is dangerous but the regional situation is also very complicated and precarious.

This question about Iraq has gotten personal.

According to recent opinion polls, a large majority of Iraqis believe that the U.S. military has no intention to leave Iraq, and that it would stay even is asked by the Iraqi government to leave.

The Iraqi people are suffering just as if they were still under Saddam.

We promise that the events of 1991 will not happen again. We have pledged to remove Saddam. And we will deliver.

The U.N. fiddled while Saddam slaughtered.

As I've said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis' future.

For no good reason, George W. Bush and the best and brightest he could muster, including the likes of Paul Bremer and Paul Wolfowitz, decided it made sense to attack Iraq.

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

The Wahhabists are the boogeymen, the guys who will chop the head off any American they catch. And they will destroy Iraq without a second thought if they believe that the instability will benefit them.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.

Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction.

My son is not wild about going back to Iraq, but he'd sure rather do that than sacrifice all that he and his fellow soldiers have accomplished by leaving too early and inviting chaos.

What we have found is that we were the principal mediators in many cases between the Iraqis and their own security forces and their own government, and so you have to almost embrace that role.

Saddam Hussein had nerve gas and used it against his own people, he had used chemical weapons against the Iranians and he almost had a nuclear bomb in 1981 and in 1991. And he had been caught with anthrax in 1995 by the UN inspections after denying that he had it.