Christopher Hitchens Quotes

We've gotten rid of (Saddam Hussein), and I suppose that's a good thing.

The mistake that was made was, of course, leaving Saddam in charge of affairs over there.

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.

Saddam Hussein was the one person after whom the United States went, and they ruined the country.

The only one who thinks the world is safer since the occupation of Iraq is Bush.

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.

By ending the Hussein regime, the United States has taken away yet another incubator of terrorism.

It was pretty clear in 2002 to anyone in the intelligence community that is where we were headed.[To war with Iraq].

When Britain and the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was with the reasonable expectation that it was going to increase the threat of terror, as it has.

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.

An intelligence officer and historian, Rayburn published a 2014 book, 'Iraq After America,' which is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Iraq descended into chaos in the years after the American troop withdrawal at the end of 2011.

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.

I still think the world is better off and safer without Saddam Hussein.

Nobody should claim that the war [in Iraq] is over. But certainly it can be said that the regime is finished.

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.

The attack on Iraq has been long planned. There just hasn't been an excuse for it. Since George H.W. Bush didn't unseat Saddam in 1991, there's been a longing among the extreme right in the United States to finish the job. The war on terrorism has given them that opportunity. Even though the logic is convoluted and fraudulent, it appears they are going to go ahead and finish the job.

I mean, there was a serious international effort to say to Saddam Hussein: 'You're a threat'. And the 9/11 attacks accentuated that threat, as far as I'm concerned.

Without mentioning names, it was other people. Some day, they ought to open the report and find out. But it was other people that knocked down the World Trade Center. So, it's no reason to go into a big - now. But it was a horrible mistake that unfortunately we should never have done it. We have lost trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, wounded warriors, who I love, all over the place. And here is the other part. Iran is taking over Iraq. They have wanted it for decades and decades and decades. They're taking it over.

The entire Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, there is massive Islamic condemnation of the United States.

The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.

[Hillary Clinton] was saying, "We never going to do anything in Iraq, we're not going to do anything in Syria." Enemies, do whatever you want. Continue the largest humanitarian crisis, 7 million people displaced refugees. Do all this. We're not going to do anything. That is the type of stuff that is been happening for the past 7 1/2 years under President [Barack] Obama.

In an odd way, we have really destroyed two of our strongest allies against the Islamists. Saddam Hussein, and we've probably fatally undermined Bashir al Assad in Syria.

Saddam Hussein was a unique threat. And the world is better off without him in power.

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.

I did not support Operation Desert Fox.