Oliver Stone Quotes

American oil operations are, for all practical purposes, instruments of our foreign policy.

Show this administration an oil well, and it will show you a foreign policy.

It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton.

The Gulf War was a clear precedent as well, and it let us begin to understand how the US government would go to war to secure strategic oil reserves and potential markets.

America has lost the moral high ground with the rest of the world, and we have fewer allies as a result. President Bush and his administration have undermined the war on terror by using tactics outlawed by international treaty and condemned by even our closest friends.

In truth, every American administration since that of Franklin D. Roosevelt has maintained close ties with the Saudi rulers, and for a single, simple reason: oil.

I do believe that during the Bush-Cheney administration, that Vice President Cheney set a tone and an attitude for the CIA.

Put simply, the Bush administration policy in the Middle East is continuing to fail.

Many Americans, and many more people around the world, have been outraged by what they see as President George W. Bush's radical reordering of American foreign policy.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

The first weekend after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush had a meeting at Camp David with his top advisors, including Colin Powell, the secretary of state. And there was a lively debate about Iraq policy, in which some people from the Pentagon were arguing that the war against terrorism should include Saddam Hussein.

Look, I don't think President Obama would have bowed to the ruler of Saudi Arabia if he didn't have oil to the degree that the Saudis do. I think they and other producing states, almost all of whom, except Norway and Canada, are dictatorships or autocratic systems, have thrown their weight around because of oil.

The Department of State has become a concession hunting agency for the Standard Oil Company

If the US directly supports Israel, ARAMCO can anticipate being nationalized if not today, then tomorrow. If the US does not stay out of this conflict, the US is finished in the Middle East.

There is nothing in common between the United States and Saudi Arabia except Israel.

We will no longer be kowtowing to despotic rulers and feudal monarchs whose oil supply lines are crucial to other aspects of foreign policy.

We will never again permit any foreign nation to have Uncle Sam over a barrel of oil.

They are one of the most profitable industries in the world, and they’re throwing money into Washington DC. They’re buying politicians.

I watched the Bush administration overreact to the Clinton administration, who believed they did too much nation building, sustaining other countries, and that's why we never put the commitment on Afghanistan and Iraq that should have been in there under their policy leadership.

State oil companies in Saudi Arabia, Africa, Iran, and Mexico have often been intelligence targets for the United States.

A new book by 'New York Times' reporter Charlie Savage, 'Power Wars,' suggests that there has been little substantive difference between George W. Bush's administration and Obama's when it comes to national-security policies or the legal justifications used to pursue regime change in the Greater Middle East.

The Bush administration's approach to the war on terror collided badly with another of its doctrines, spreading democracy in the Middle East as a panacea to reduce radicalism.

This is not the colonial empire that somehow he has in his hand. I’ve never felt that from him. I felt that from [George] W [Bush]. I felt that from [Bill] Clinton. I felt that from every American president, including ones I disagreed with, including [Jimmy] Carter. I don’t feel that from President Obama.

The United States has been essentially engaged in an ongoing war that most people date from 2001. That war has taken us to Afghanistan, to Iraq, in a lesser way to other countries - Libya, Somalia, Yemen.

America was the funder of petro-dictatorships. We treated all these countries as basically big, large gas stations: Libya station, Iraq station, Iran station, Egypt station, Syria station, and all we asked of them were three things: Keep your palms open, your prices low and don't bother Israel too much, and you can do whatever you want to your own people.