Iraq Invasion Quotes

#1. I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion.

P. J. O'Rourke

#2. The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians.

Shashi Tharoor

#3. It [the Iraq invasion] was absolutely an error. It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct. That's absolutely true and that's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq.

Stephen Harper

#4. The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

Noam Chomsky

#5. I still agree with the invasion of Iraq. I don't agree with most of the decisions that accompanied it.

William Hague

#6. I am sorry for those who have never had the experience of seeing the victory of a national liberation movement, and I feel cold contempt for those who jeer at it.

Christopher Hitchens

#7. I don't think any sensible person would disagree that the invasion of Iraq led to the massive level of instability that we're seeing right now. I think that was one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of the United States.

Bernie Sanders

#8. The disastrous invasion of Iraq, something that I strongly opposed, has unraveled the region.

Bernie Sanders

#9. If anything caused ISIS, it was the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Mohammad Javad Zarif

#10. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is illegal.

Kofi Annan

#11. It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.)

Junot Diaz

#12. The invasion of Iraq was simply a war crime. Straight-out war crime.

Noam Chomsky

#13. We can't know in advance what history is going to say, but I would be utterly amazed and surprised if American invasion to Iraq from the beginning of its inception, were not judged to be an utter failure and a terrible, terrible thing for the world.

Robert Reich

#14. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military conducted only a handful of drone missions.

Michael Hastings

#15. I think the way things have been left after Iraq is that people won't believe the Government of the day, so they have to know that lessons have been learnt and that all political parties and people, whether they were for or against the invasion of Iraq, have learnt lessons.

William Hague

#16. The claims made about Iraq's WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.

Colin Powell

#17. One of the errors of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the belief that regime change must be creative. The theory was that the destruction of a state and its ruling elite would bring freedom and justice.

Timothy Snyder

#18. I believe, if done correctly, eliminating Saddam and liberating Iraq could be the 'Normandy Invasion' or 'fall of the Berlin Wall' of our generation ... the Iraqi people are eager to be rid of Saddam, and there is equally encouraging evidence that republican principles could thrive there.

Pete Hegseth

#19. The first time I went to Iraq was October 2002, when Saddam was still in power, and then, subsequently, in January of 2003, about three-and-a-half months before the U.S. invasion. So, I got to see the before and after of Iraq, basically, before and after the war.

Farnaz Fassihi

#20. The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.

Kofi Annan

#21. I had first visited Kurdistan in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, camping out in Erbil and Sulaimaniya while waiting for Saddam Hussein's fall.

Lynsey Addario

#22. Congress passed the deeply flawed Patriot Act and authorized the invasion of Iraq. It even gave its retroactive approval to warrantless wiretapping.

Andrew Rosenthal

#23. In the annals of American blunders, the Bay of Pigs may have been even more feckless, and the invasion of Iraq more costly, but we cannot yet calculate the cost of teaching Iran and others, by our role in the casual overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, the peril of not having nuclear weapons.

George Will

#24. The American invasion did not succeed in Vietnam, and will never succeed in Iraq.

Mohammed Aldouri

#25. The more [people] know about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the less they support it.

Thomas Andrews

#26. Two European nations emerged with credit from the Iraq disaster: France and Germany. Both had the courage to withstand the Bush administration and oppose the U.S.-led invasion.

Martin Jacques

#27. One year after the United States led the invasion of Iraq, the country remains extremely dangerous not only to our troops, but also to the stability of the world.

Jay Rockefeller

#28. Some international law specialists compare the invasion of Iraq to the 'crimes against the peace' for which Nazi leaders were indicted at Nuremberg.

Noam Chomsky

#29. Saddam Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran/Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait, and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the current invasion.

Richard Dawkins

#30. A lot of controversy over this possible invasion of Iraq. In fact, Nelson Mandela was so upset, he called Bush's dad. How embarrassing, when world leaders start calling your father.

Jay Leno

#31. It was, however, in the interest of Osama bin Laden for us to destroy a secular Arab leader; it was very much in the interest of the Iranians because they wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's invasion in 1980.

William Odom

#32. The Second World War is and was constantly being drudged up by Blair and Bush to rationalize the invasion of Iraq.

Robert Fisk

#33. The invasion only made matters worse. The occupation will not work, Iraq is unoccupiable, that will not work.

Jesse Jackson

#34. I have said the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. But I think if we're ever going to really tackle the problems posed by jihadi extreme terrorism, we need to understand it and realize that it has antecedents to what happened in Iraq and we have to continue to be vigilant about it.

Hillary Clinton

#35. What is happening in Iraq now is awful, but it is a consequence of our invasion, not our withdrawal.The blame for what's happening right now is squarely at Maliki's feet. This is not a responsibility of the United States.

Chris Murphy

#36. The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of
blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of international law.

Harold Pinter

#37. When I stood up to oppose an invasion of Iraq in 2002, it wasn't a popular thing to do.

Chellie Pingree

#38. Western conception of history has had great consequences over the last two hundred years. You see it in the invasion of Iraq. You see it in almost everything that is said and done.

Pankaj Mishra

#39. But for the media to name their coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the same as what the Pentagon calls it - everyday seeing 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' - you have to ask: 'If this were state controlled media, how would it be any different?'

Amy Goodman

#40. I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

Jimmy Carter

#41. The Western world doesn't really give enough credit to the importance in history of the Soviet invasion and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. For us it was a sideshow of the Cold War. For the Islamic world it was an unprovoked infidel invasion of a Muslim country not unlike Iraq.

Michael Scheuer

#42. The invasion of Iraq was not an unprecedented event; it really was the natural extension of a conflict with Iraq that began on August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and occupied Kuwait, which was a major oil supplier to the United States.

Michael Klare

#43. The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.

Walter Cronkite

#44. Iran is biggest strategic beneficiary of invasion of Iraq.

Barack Obama

#45. I wouldn't be at all surprised, as hideous and dumb as it sounds, at an invasion of Iraq.

Hunter S. Thompson

#46. After spending the 1980s building up Saddam's Iraq as a counterweight to Iran, U.S. policy abruptly reversed course with his invasion of Kuwait and has since tried to cut him down to size. The policy is called 'containment,' but the question is, containment of what?

Michael Ignatieff

#47. The degree to which people in developed countries take political institutions for granted was very much evident in the way that the United States planned, or failed to plan, for the aftermath of its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Francis Fukuyama