George W. Bush Quotes

The decision to leave [Iraq] should be based solely on the judgment of the combatant commanders on the ground who say, "My Iraqi counterparts can now handle this particular area of the country on their own with minimum American support or with no American support." When they can do that, we should leave.

We needed to go back on the offense and offer clear leadership on Iraq.

We were in opposition to the decision to go to war. But after the war happened, it was clear that you could not sit and look-there would be a breeding ground for terrorism or a new collapsed or failed state named Iraq!

We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.

Our nation must manage significant national security challenges over the next several years. We are already facing a potential conflict with Iraq, new challenges on the Korean peninsula, and key decisions in the president's plans to transform the military.

It's very unlikely that we're going to send more troops to Iraq. We are going to have to train the Iraqis faster and harder.

I was heartened to hear the President say that as we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels.

You can’t fly in to an aircraft carrier and declare the war is over and then have American troops continue to die in Iraq. You just can’t do that.

Relying on the Iraqi Army to fight ISIS in Iraq is problematical, but there are no other options.

Now, I know there are many Americans who say, 'Get out of Afghanistan. Bring 'em all home.' And there are others who say, 'Put in hundreds of thousands of more.'

The president has outlined a new strategy for success in Iraq, but in order for this effort to be successful the Iraqi government must be held accountable. ... If we fail in Iraq, or withdraw our troops prematurely, the terrorists will follow us home. Success is our only option.

There are enough fools in Washington to destroy the country without any help from Muslim terrorists.

Democrats proposing failure in Iraq by withdrawing.

In response to the escalating violence in Iraq, President Bush is delaying the return home of 25,000 troops and will actually add reinforcements to the south. Then in a symbolic gesture he pulled down the mission accomplished banner, put on a flight suit, walked backwards to a jet fighter and flew it in reverse off an aircraft carrier.

President Obama is sending a couple hundred troops to Iraq. We spent six years trying to figure a way to get out of Iraq. And now we're back. But this time there is an exit strategy. Barack Obama has an exit strategy. In 2016, he's gone.

Leonid Brezhnev did not understand the enormous political importance of the decision to produce and afterwards deploy the SS-20s.

Once we got hit by - on 9/11 and lost 3,000 people that day, we recognized, and it was one of the key decisions President Bush made, that this is not a law enforcement problem, it is a strategic threat to the United States. It's a war. And based on that, we then adopted a whole set of policies that flowed out of that proposition.

A change of strategy suggests there is a strategy. I don't see a strategy that deals with - that concerns with dealing wit with ISIL overall. There is some sort of strategy for dealing with it in Iraq. I'm not sure there is one in Syria. And Libya is another problem altogether.

President Trump is not a representative of the political establishment class. And so for whatever reason, people have made a decision that they want to eject him. It's almost like he's opened up the door now for America's CEOs and America's billionaires to enter the Washington political system.

Denying Al Qaeda safe haven was the right decision.

Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror, and therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that.

The question is: How do we succeed in Iraq? And you don't succeed by leaving before the mission is complete, like some in this political process are suggesting.

The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy, we have Mosul. They think a lot of the ISIS leaders are in Mosul. So we have announcements coming out of Washington and coming out of Iraq, we will be attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks. Well, all of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly?

We need a president who understands the first obligation of the commander-in-chief is to keep America safe. If I am elected president, we will hunt down and kill the terrorists. We will utterly destroy ISIS.

Any military force should be dictated by the vital national security interests of the United States. And if and when we use force, we should use overwhelming force for a clearly stated objective. And then when we're done, we should get the heck out.