Carl Levin Quotes

A war initiated by faulty intelligence should not to complicated by a premature pull out of our troops.

The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq without pausing to ask why. Why is war being dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort?

Iraq is an unjust war. I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could — with 100 per cent certainty — know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

I do not believe, given her past decisions and comments on the reasons to go to war in Iraq, that Dr. Rice will be able to represent the United States without a predetermined bias from the war.

I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth.

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

Don't invade Iraq. Inspections work, war won't.

The Iraq war was not necessary.

I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

I have absolutely no regret about my vote against this war. The same questions remain. The cost in human lives, the cost to our budget, probably 100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less.

I think we need to ask serious questions about how we engage militarily, when we engage militarily, and on what basis we engage militarily. What kind of intelligence do we have to justify a military engagement?

There were major intelligence failures and staying out there chasing weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist was not what I wanted to do.

There is no reason that Iraq should be at war with Israel.

President Bush admitted that the United States went to war in Iraq based on bad intelligence. But he says knowing what we know now he would still do it again. So at least we're learning from our mistakes.

Let's be clear: Neither Secretary Powell or I opposed the notion of removing Saddam Hussein by force, but we wanted to avoid the war if we could. But if we couldn't, the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from the scene seemed eminently sensible, given that you had, what, 16 or so U.N. Security Council resolutions basically saying the same thing.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

The war in Iraq has been extremely divisive here at home, and has also divided the world community.

One of the sharp parallels is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq was the slightest threat to America's national security.

As we continue to make great progress in the war on terror, now more than ever, it is important that members of the international community stand-by and bolster the efforts of the emerging diplomatic leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are not at war with Egypt. We are in an armed conflict.

I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

First, we could have defied both of them and could have gone to war against both of these nations for this violation of international law and interference with our neutral rights.

In July of 2004, I came out strongly against the war with Iraq because it was going to destabilize the Middle East.

The American people have decided that it was a mistake to choose to go to war in Iraq.