Pete Hoekstra Quotes

The need to remove Col. Qaddafi should be self-evident.

By ending the Hussein regime, the United States has taken away yet another incubator of terrorism.

There are still plenty of fighting forces inside of Syria who want to see Assad go. We should have been helping them from the very beginning.

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.

This is a big deal. My wife and I sat in our home and we watched those young men get slaughtered on the streets of Mogadishu in the absence of a plan. It broke our heart.

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

The understanding of Syria's devastating civil war has been distorted by the immense danger and difficulty of covering it.

If Sudan starts to crumble, the shock waves will spread.

Last chances in the Middle East have been two a dirham since the 1950s. Each year the enmities are more profound, the despots more bloodthirsty and clownish, the violence more extreme, and the conditions of ordinary existence more ghastly.

This war in Iraq is part of a larger effort to remove this terrorist threat from the planet.

Time is not on Gaddafi's side. People ask about the exit strategy. It's Colonel Gaddafi who needs an exit strategy because this pressure will only mount and it will be intensified over the coming days and weeks.

Many governments are quick to condemn Assad, but a dwindling number of them would celebrate a rebel victory in Damascus.

I cannot either change or do anything bad or good to the Syrian people and Syrian citizens.

At least 23,000 civilians have also died in the Iraqi killing field and the U.S. is stuck in a quagmire.

When Colonel Gadhafi started using his air force against civilians on the ground, we did not hesitate. Then we supported the resolution of the Security Council, which introduced arms embargo for Libya.

That was not part of the U.N. resolution; it was not part of the mandate to go on to Baghdad and, frankly, if we had gone into Baghdad and pushed Saddam Hussein off, we would have inherited an even bigger mess than the mess we inherited with the refugee problem.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

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.

Once a conflict has dragged on for a decade, most people are tired of war - and the troubles that flow from it.

I assure you, it would be much more pleasant for me to be an ordinary voter in peaceful Chechnya than the president of a republic at war.

I have nothing but contempt for Gadhafi. I'm not a Gadhafi supporter in any way. However, it's not clear to me that it's a vital and compelling national security objective of the United States that we ought to use military force to remove him from power. He's not the only unpleasant and unsavory dictator in the world.

I think that's the main threat in Bosnia and Rwanda and Zaire. There doesn't seem to be much willingness to engage these problems unless they directly affect national security interests.

My God, this is war against the United Nations.

The problem with the War in Iraq is that every time we turn the corner, there is another corner.

Syria cannot continue this way—killing their people