Peter Bergen Quotes

The President reminded us that the war in Iraq is a central battlefield in the war on terror that began the morning of September the 11th.

Afghanistan and Iraq were lumped together in what was called a 'global war on terrorism.'

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.

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.

What we now have in Iraq is a defeat.

My own prediction is that the Iraqis will all fly at each other’s throats and that there will be a bad slump in the administration that will continue until someone strong enough to dominate the country emerges, or, alternatively, until we have to step in and intervene.

I think a weakened, fragmented, chaotic Iraq, which could happen if this isn’t done carefully, is more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam is now.

The main reason the Americans have come to Iraq is to put down the Shiite people—to prevent us from setting up a Shiite religious government.

The occupation of Iraq is completely self-perpetuating: The worse things get the more we are obliged to stay. And the longer we stay the worse things get.

There is no question that what we are seeing - the horrible advance of ISIS - goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

Once the U.S. and NATO walked away from Libya, a chaotic, lawless state in the soft underbelly of Europe arose.

The rise of ISIS is a result of - Obama and Clinton making a decision to pull our troops out without preparing Iraq is a colossal mistake.

I personally think that today, Iraq without Saddam Hussein is a truly better Iraq than with Saddam Hussein. But, naturally, I also feel uncomfortable due to the fact that we were misled with the information on weapons of mass destruction.

We're at war with the ISIS caliphate that sprang up because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama precipitously withdrew all American forces from Iraq and created a vacuum of power, that ISIS was able to overrun vast territories that our soldiers had won in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.

Iraq will spread them even more and chop them up.

The big issue is whether the United States will succeed in its venture of reshaping the Middle East. It is not clear to me that using military force is the way to do it. We should not have gone into Iraq. But we have.

ISIS is a monstrosity. It didn't come from nowhere. It's one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society - Iraq - with a sledgehammer.

Osama bin Laden is going after us to get us out of the region, so he can deal with the regimes that he sees in the region, or replace them with purists.

There's a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration's problem, which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous.

The reality in Iraq is that we are creating new terrorists and severely damaging the public impression of the United States in the Muslim world.

Weapons systems the U.S. sold to the Shah of Iran wound up in the hands of Islamic militants who seized power there in 1979; a comparable scenario in Saudi Arabia is hardly impossible.

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

Iraq is falling apart.

In addition, it is very likely that United States action in Iraq caused Iran to open its nuclear facilities for international inspection and suspend its uranium enrichment activities.