Bashir Assad Quotes

Iraq is not about oil.

I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when the British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.

By linking these countries together in his 'axis of evil' speech, President Bush implied an identity between them not only in terms of their threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat. A lot of work will now need to be done to delink the three, and to show why military action against Iraq is so much more justified than against Iran and North Korea.

Russia should recognize the freedom of countries, such as Ukraine, to choose their alliances.

Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.

I disapprove of lots of decisions made by George Bush: the war, the meddling in the affairs of other countries, the conversations with dictators; it was a dark time.

I'm not a single-issue person, but I spend so much time on Israel because it is so unfairly condemned around the world.

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

If the United States is treating Afghanistan as a sovereign country it has to prove it.

We must do everything we can to be more aggressive in confronting Syria about what they are doing in Iraq.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

We had, after all, no other recourse to protect ourselves, no other document, let's say, than the Monroe Doctrine. So that could be cited as a cause for intervention if and when it might become necessary.

I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.

You can’t undo a thousand years of history by sending military troops into a country.

America simply prefers to deal with dictators.

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

World politics is not a kindergarten.

We do not have the God-given right to intervene in any country in which we feel like intervening.

I should drag in the United States.

If Americans are entitled to hit Iraq unilaterally, then why isn't Russia entitled to the same with respect to Georgia? Why is China not entitled to the same with respect to some other neighboring country which, according to Chinese views, may be supporting insurrection in Tibet or Shenyang? Why, say, India is not entitled to hit Pakistan, which openly supports terrorists in Kashmir and which has nuclear weapons, and which has a very fragile domestic situation under which fundamentalists any day can come to power

No American president will ever pay a political price for choosing national security over world opinion.

Well, I think both Russia and China have a very strong aversion to interference in internal affairs.

We do not worry about how a sovereign country keeps its relations with others.

We have a much bigger objective. We've got to look at the long run here. This is an example - the situation between the United Nations and Iraq - where the United Nations is deliberately intruding into the sovereignty of a sovereign nation.... Now this is a marvelous precedent (to be used in) all countries of the world.

The U.S. should never get involved where we have no clear national interest. We should not intervene militarily in a country like Syria, where we can’t separate friend from foe and might end up arming the very people who hate us the most.