Top 100 Iraq's Quotes
#1. House Speaker John Boehner says President Obama should have clearly outlined his exact plans before bombing Libya. Apparently it's only Iraq where you don't have to do that.
Jay Leno
#2. We are a country that has many friends, many allies, when we operate in the world, we operate with friends and allies that's been true for decades and if we wind up going to war in Iraq it will be true in Iraq.
Douglas Feith
#3. President Bush said it's now time for a change in Iraq and he wants them to have a Western-style democracy like ours. So right now in Iraq, the economy is collapsing, businessmen are corrupt, and Hussein wants his son to take over as president. Sounds like mission accomplished.
Jay Leno
#4. The British Labour Party has always had a very strong "Atlanticist component," with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action.
John Pilger
#5. Aside from an intervention, which I don't think is on anybody's mind, Iraq is going to have defend for itself.
Doug Collins
#6. 'The war in Iraq - if Osama was a Christian - it's the Christmas present he never would have expected.
Michael Scheuer
#7. As far as Iraq is concerned, let's not forget what the UNSCR is about, that the main consideration in Iraq is that there is a leader who has been developing weapons of mass destruction, and has been violating UN resolutions for over a decade.
Donald Evans
#8. We can't have a failure in Iraq, but we also can't be there for the next 10 years because if we are, it's going to become, I think, a failure in and of itself.
Dennis Ross
#9. What we've also got to think about is the limitations of military power. Maybe it's time to focus on the economic issues, and most of all the political issues, because the political failure in Iraq right now is almost worse than the military failure. And the two are intertwined.
Paul Rieckhoff
#10. In the short run, using militias might be the quickest and easiest way to improve order on Iraq's streets and uproot the terrorists and guerrillas who routinely attack American troops and civilian targets.
Alex Berenson
#11. Independence used to be the ticket for liberty. But today, security and freedom, whether it's in the Arab Spring, whether it's in Iraq or whether it's right here in the United States, means working cooperatively and interdependently with others.
Benjamin Barber
#12. We were told by the president that we had no alternative but to go into Iraq because of the threat that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed, but to date, these weapons have not been found.
Jay Rockefeller
#13. There is no question that Iraq is one of the main problems. You'd have to be blind not to see what a magnet and generating force it's become for terrorist groups.
Otto Schily
#14. If there is a thread that unites all of our work, whether it's in Iowa or whether it's in Maryland or whether it's among our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe that it's the thread of human dignity.
Martin O'Malley
#15. The only people benefiting in Iraq war are George Bush's Jr. friends in the oil industry. He has done the American economy and the global economy an enormous disfavor, but his Texan friends couldn't be happier.
Joseph Stiglitz
#16. My message is, is that although some of you didn't agree with the actions we took, now let's work together to rebuild Iraq, rebuild Afghanistan, fight AIDS and hunger, deal with slavery, like sex slavery, and deal with proliferation. Let's work together on big issues.
George W. Bush
#17. That's what separates out American democracy from dictators and horrible governments across the world and the reason why that works is that we have a president that can consult with congress before making big decisions. That doesn't just make a unilateral decision to go in for military conflict.
Charles R. Chamberlain
#18. Bringing the troops home is necessary not just for the future of Iraq, but also for the people of the United States. We must stop the hemorrhaging of tax dollars that could go to meet our Nation's vital domestic needs.
Raul Grijalva
#19. As a final example, let's remember Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the World Trade Center. After his name appeared in an ad opposing war in Iraq, Mr. Glick was invited on The Factor .. I'm not going to dress you down anymore.
Bill O'Reilly
#20. As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the eye to come back to the United States.
Rick Santorum
#21. Maybe it's the spy novelist in me looking for a future plot, but I hope the U.S. and its allies are thinking how to operate 'unconventionally' in Iraq and Syria in ways that undermine the Islamic State.
David Ignatius
#22. When Britain and the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was with the reasonable expectation that it was going to increase the threat of terror, as it has.
Noam Chomsky
#23. I think Donald Trump's history has shown that this was a very problematic thing. There were so many ways Iraq could have gone awry once we started, and I don't think most of us spend enough time considering the dangers.
Jeff Sessions
#24. The U.S. and Iraq will work together next year to shift Iraqi resources from unproductive subsidies to productive uses that enable Iraqis to earn livelihoods.
Zalmay Khalilzad
#25. The Committee's review of a series of intelligence shortcomings, to include intelligence prior to 9/11 and the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, clearly reveal how vital a diverse intelligence workforce is to our national security.
Jane Harman
#26. 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
#27. It's very hard to understand just what our strategy is in Syria, frankly, and on Iraq that this is Iraq's war, that the role of the United States is to help Iraq, to arm, train, support, provide air support, but this has to be Iraq's war.
David Ignatius
#28. If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that Bush lied about WMD, the thumbnail version of Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.
Michael Hastings
#29. There are more good people than bad people, and overall there's more that's good in the world than there is that's bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.
Tucker Elliot
#30. The conduct of President Bush's war of choice has been plagued with incompetent civilian leadership decisions that have cost many lives and rendered the war on and occupation of Iraq a strategic policy disaster for the United States.
John Olver
#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. It's a thin line between what we're calling acceptable and not acceptable. As a leader, you're supposed to know when not to cross it. But how do you know? Does the army teach us how to control our emotions? Does the army teach us how to deal with a friend bleeding out in front of you? No.
David Finkel
#33. At the end of the day we want to bring stability and hope to Iraq. That's the only way to defeat terrorism.
Abdallah II Of Jordan
#34. Religious distinctions are deeply important for many of the problems in today's Middle East, particularly between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Syria and Iraq.
Max Fisher
#35. No. That's someone else's business. Quagmire is - I don't do quagmires.
Donald Rumsfeld
#36. But the key thing is that Iraq, while it's got very large oil reserves, has marginalized itself as an oil exporter and these days its exports are only about one tenth that of neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Daniel Yergin
#37. Well, this is an unfortunate part of the UN institution. It's the - the theater of the absurd. It doesn't only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading roles: Gadhafi's Libya chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights; Saddam's Iraq headed the UN Committee on Disarmament.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#38. There's something odd about working 24/7, being consumed with everything that's happening in Iraq, and then coming back to the country that ordered you over there only to realize that a lot of Americans are not really paying attention.
Phil Klay
#39. The only time I penetrated Tony Blair's defenses over Iraq was by keeping eye contact while telling him he never seemed to by sorry
Andrew Marr
#40. The church that took two thousand years to build in Iraq and Syria, started by the apostles themselves, has nearly been destroyed in the blink of an eye at the hands of manics who won't stop until they win or they die. At least that's what everyone I met in Iraq believes. Every single one of them.
Johnnie Moore
#41. [Today's left] would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq the property of a psychopathic crime family. Now, I'm sorry to say, I've no patience with that leftist mentality anymore.
Christopher Hitchens
#42. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Centcom, is probably the most decorated officer of his generation.
David Ignatius
#43. Are you okay, man?"
"Yeah, I'm good."
It's a lie. I wonder if I will ever be good again.
David Bellavia
#44. Of all Iraq's rocket scientists, none drew warier scrutiny abroad than Modher Sadeq-Saba Tamimi.
Barton Gellman
#45. Those who arrived on America's tanks are not credible in Iraq.
Bashar Al-Assad
#46. We are succeeding in Iraq. It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding.
Iyad Allawi
#47. One of the lessons of Vietnam, which we failed to heed in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan surge, is that before you commit U.S. military forces to aid or assist, it is essential to know what you want them to achieve.
Kathleen Troia McFarland
#48. Here's how bizarre the war is that we're in in Iraq, and we should have known this right from the get-go: When we first went into Iraq, Germany didn't want to go. Germany. The Michael Jordan of war took a pass.
Jon Stewart
#49. Over in Iraq after you vote they paint your finger purple so you can't vote again. It's a flawless system. It works perfectly unless, of course, someone has paint remover.
Jay Leno
#50. Of course, I'm drawn to a place like Iraq because It's the biggest story of our generation.
Joe Sacco
#51. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq, [Bush's] assumptions and policies have been wrong. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw.
Fareed Zakaria
#52. If the United States were to cut and run from Iraq, we would send a message of weakness that would embolden our terrorist enemies across the globe. A failed Iraq would destabilize the entire region and undermine U.S. national security for decades to come.
Dennis Cardoza
#53. I've said before: If Osama bin Laden was a Christian, Iraq was the Christmas present he always wanted but never expected his parents to give. It validated for the Muslim world virtually all of bin Laden's rhetoric. He had always said the Americans will destroy any strong Muslim regime, and we did.
Michael Scheuer
#54. Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!
Mark Shields
#55. It's now clear that from the very moment President Bush took office, Iraq was his highest priority as unfinished business from the first Bush Administration. His agenda was clear: find a rationale to get rid of Saddam.
Edward Kennedy
#56. I think what he's - what he believes, and he may be correct, I don't know, that we have some intelligence information that leads us to know some things about what's going on in Iraq that we haven't revealed to others.
Lawrence Eagleburger
#57. There were no terrorists in Iraq. There's never been an Iraqi terrorist.
Jodie Evans
#59. In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors.
Noam Chomsky
#60. There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies. If Saddam persists in thumbing his nose at the inspectors, then we're clearly going to have to do something about it.
Howard Dean
#61. Let's see what's going on over in Iraq. A Burger King has opened up and prostitutes are back on the street of Baghdad after 20 years. Fast food and hookers - they are truly living the American Dream.
David Letterman
#62. Destroying Iraq was the greatest strategic blunder this country has made in its history. Unless we change course, there's every reason to believe the Iraq War will end up changing the United States more than it will ever change Iraq.
Robert Baer
#63. As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? Think about it - it was written by very smart people, it's served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we're not using it anymore.
Jay Leno
#64. Iraq." As much as twenty percent of returning veterans from Iraq had post-traumatic stress, some thought even more. Aiden's anxiety was par for the course. Duncan wondered why he hadn't gotten therapy at the VA.
J.M. Madden
#65. Most of the State of the Union will not be about Iraq. Most of the State of the Union will be about improving America's economy and providing greater access to health care for millions of American people, including senior citizens.
Ari Fleischer
#67. What you have in Iraq is not just a society coming apart like Yugoslavia or Congo. What is at stake is not just Iraq's stability but the balance of power in the region.
Vali Nasr
#68. If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
William J. Clinton
#69. The United States Central Command of the Armed Forces has asked Geraldo Rivera to leave Iraq. It should also be noted that the only three other people that the U.S. military has asked to leave Iraq are Saddam Hussein and his two sons.
Jon Stewart
#70. I think it reflects the reality on the ground, that this was an important milestone that's been achieved by the Iraqi people, and it's a significant development. It's a real hopeful moment for democracy in Iraq.
Scott McClellan
#71. You've got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don't have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they're gay. That's not reflective of who we are.
Barack Obama
#72. The United States is not for democracy in Iraq, it's for setting up a puppet government.
Peter Camejo
#73. On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.
Hans Blix
#74. I was the first blogger on the 'Times's website. That happened during the Iraq war, when I wanted an outlet for the things I was seeing every day that couldn't fit into just two columns a week. Then I became interested in using multimedia, specifically as a way to engage young people.
Nicholas Kristof
#75. If Bush had gone into Iraq for cynical reasons, we could cut our losses now. What's frightening is that he did it for ideological reasons, and therefore he's not going to get out. So it isn't ultimately about oil or about Israel, it's about a belief.
Seymour Hersh
#76. Let's win the peace and democracy the good people of Iraq so richly deserve after decades of tyranny.
Mike Pence
#77. Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.
Joseph Stiglitz
#78. It is a kind of ego booster, the way Egypt's winning the 1973 war, in the first stages, was an uplift. But I did not find when I spoke to people that the war in Iraq was seen as the major issue in American-Arab relations.
Walter Russell Mead
#79. 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
#80. Like Russia's gangsterism and Bush's cronyism, contemporary Iraq is a creation of the fifty-year crusade to privatize the world. Rather than being disowned by its creators, it deserves to be seen as the purest incarnation yet of the ideology that gave it birth.
Naomi Klein
#81. Then the Zionists got involved and affected relations. The U.S. Congress stopped the export of grain to Iraq from the U.S. We explained it as Jewish influence and our stance on Palestine.
John Nixon
#82. A lot of Iran's empowerment is a result of the war in Iraq.
Richard Engel
#83. I have this thought, it's horrible, and it makes me sick, but it's true: one day these students will grow up and have their own kids, and they're going to name them for men and women who will die in this war.
Tucker Elliot
#84. The Erdogan government's first major step outside of the U.S. alliance was during the Bush Administration, when it wouldn't let Washington use Turkey as a launching ground for U.S. troops entering Iraq in 2003.
Elliott Abrams
#85. Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There's no question about that.
Nancy Pelosi
#86. Real freedom will come when U.S. soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors.
John Daly
#87. Who created the sectarian attitude in Iraq? The occupation, ... We never heard of this before in our history. But it's good that Condoleezza Rice realizes sectarianism is not good for Iraq. All we want from them is fair and clean elections next month.
Saleh Al-Mutlaq
#88. President Bush said this Iraq situation looks like 'the rerun of a bad movie.' Well sure, there's a Bush in the White House, the economy's going to hell, we're going to war over oil. I've seen this movie, haven't I?
Jay Leno
#89. It won't take weeks ... Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will.
Bill O'Reilly
#90. Consumerism diverts us from thinking about women's rights, it stops us from thinking about Iraq, it stops us from thinking about what's going on in Africa - it stops us from thinking in general.
Pink
#91. I would add entertainment media cheerleader Wolf Blitzer, CNN's Pentagon sycophant in Kuwait City, a representative of the neon press, neon being that colorless, inert gas that lights up on command.
Stan Goff
#92. The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. That's why they're fighting so vociferously.
George W. Bush
#94. Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then, he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.
John Sununu
#95. Since the ousting and capture of Saddam Hussein by U.S. forces, civil rights and personal freedoms have been restored in Iraq, as well as equal rights to all, not just to Saddam's entourage of terrorists.
Jim Gerlach
#96. By the time we, consumers, are aware of processes like genetic engineering, they're already being done. It's sort of like the war in Iraq: By the time we know about it, it's almost a fait accompli. And that's certainly true with science.
Ruth Ozeki
#97. The notion that we won the war against Iraq is like saying we won a war against Arizona. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's not that big of a country. Nobody, I don't think, had any notion that we would do anything but win it.
Carol Moseley Braun
#98. The President said that Gold told him to invade Iraq. You see that's what happens when you mix New Testament and Old Milwaukee.
Bill Maher
#99. The alphabet was invented in Iraq, so it's a cool place.
Baron Vaughn
#100. The average voter out there understands that the next president is going to have to be prepared to immediately step in without hesitation and end our involvement in Iraq. It's very difficult to figure out how to move on to broader foreign policy concerns without fixing Iraq first.
Joe Biden
