Peter Schuyler Quotes

There's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

Imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein, who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East. Part of the reason we went into Iraq was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.

The world is a better place with Saddam Hussein gone.

In the post-9/11 world you cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. As a result of our going into Iraq, not only is Saddam Hussein gone, but Qaddafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction and tremendous progress is being made in Iraq.

But there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In 2002 and 2003, the Bush administration decided against bombing Zarqawi's camp in northern Iraq because it might derail plans to depose Saddam Hussein. By focusing on Zarqawi in his speech at the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell inadvertently spread his fame throughout the Arab world.

Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith was equally insistent in 2002-2003 about an operational relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.

At the end of the day, Iraq was a part of the fight against terrorism.

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.

Despite recent media reports that have clouded, or even misrepresented, the facts, there is compelling evidence that al-Qaida and Iraq have been linked for more than a decade.

The reality is, it will be a significant conflict going for many, many months, if not longer. Saddam Hussein is not a fool. He hasn't been sitting there waiting to get shot for 13 years.

Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11.

There's overwhelming evidence... circumstantial and otherwise, to suggest a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Contrary to what the Americans frequently reiterated, al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime.

No one can plausibly argue that ridding the world of Saddam Hussein will not significantly improve the stability of the region and the security of American interests and values.

I mean, there was a serious international effort to say to Saddam Hussein: 'You're a threat'. And the 9/11 attacks accentuated that threat, as far as I'm concerned.

Would the Iraq War have occurred without WMD? I doubt it.

Saddam was a threat, that the threat had to be dealt with.

Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.

We are safer, the region is safer, the world is safer without Saddam.

No connection between Iraq and the 9/11 catastrophe.

There have been linkages between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda going back more or less a decade.

We went into Iraq because Iraq posed a threat to the stability of the region and was engaged in the process of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.

So to recap: we may or may not be going to war with Iraq because Saddam may or may not have weapons of mass destruction, which he may or may not use, or pass to other terrorists groups with whom he may or may not have links.

My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis - a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis - that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.