The fact is, the Middle East has been going crazy for 50, 60, 70 years. So it's not like, 'Oh, I need an ISIS joke.'
Iran is not an enemy of ISIS; they have a lot to gain from the turmoil that ISIS creates.
Why is the Muslim world plagued by instability, undemocratic governments, and sectarian violence?
You know the Middle East is going crazy when Lebanon is the most peaceful place in the region.
Like a nuclear disaster, the fallout from the meltdown of Syria threatens to be with us for decades, and the longer it is permitted to continue, the more severe the damage will be.
Nobody's interests are served by what's happening in Syria today. It's a catastrophe. It's the worst human catastrophe since World War II. And, as I said just now, it represents a failure of the entire international community to come to grips with solving it.
The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is a prime example. Even though Obama KNEW - from the moment of the assault - that it was a TERRORIST attack, he didn't let the American people know.
The acronym ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But increasingly, we see that it's not limited there. We see it in Egypt. We see it in Libya. We see it in Afghanistan.
The whole issue of Iraq has left us with a legacy, which is not good. The ripple effect from that initial invasion is continually being felt in worldwide institutions, in the U.S. and the U.K.
A failed Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will provide safe haven for terrorists and extremists. It will embolden those who are trying to thwart the ambitions of reformers.
The Middle East has gone through periods of turmoil before. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were revolutions. When monarchies were collapsing in a number of countries, we had radicals and we had Nasserism. Today it's a little bit more complicated.
Many of the fights that are going on are not ones that the United States has either started or have a role in. The Shia-- Sunni split, the dictatorships that have suppressed people's aspirations, the increasing globalization without any real safety valve for people to have a better life. We saw that in Egypt. We saw a dictator overthrown, we saw Muslim Brotherhood president installed and then we saw him ousted and the army back.
There's more than 1700 emails out of the thirty three thousand Hillary Clinton emails that we've published, just about Libya. It's not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of [Muammar] Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state - something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President.
The Arab world is ripe for internal revolution like the USSR and China in the past decade.
Middle East has been in turmoil for thousands of years. For us to think that we're going to in there and fix that with a couple of little bombs and a few little decorations is relatively foolish.
What is happening in Iraq now is awful, but it is a consequence of our invasion, not our withdrawal.
Soaring prices for crude oil, falling production surpluses, wild speculation in commodities, a rush into the precious metals, turmoil in the Middle East, assertive oil producers: it is 1973-74 all over again, and at dictation speed.
History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper.
In crises, the old is dying and the new has not been born. Hence, the revolts we are witnessing in Egypt and Tunisia, which may yet extend to other countries in the region, are full of uncertainties.
Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilisation of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself err was no longer able to control the movement of people through it.
I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I am a realist, and the reality in Iraq is that it has been very hard and it continues to be hard.
We're being attacked, Britain is being attacked, our allies are being attacked because we've installed and backed and implemented a set of policies in the Middle East for the last years or more.
