George W. Bush Quotes

There is no question that al-Qaida operatives are currently active in Iraq. A premature exit before the threat they represent has been dealt with would endanger America and the prospects of eventual peace in the Middle East.

Iraq continues to be an immense disaster, and the President has no apparent plan for getting our troops out.

Afghanistan remains an opportunity to deal al Qaeda a vital strategic blow, especially since we have abandoned all operations - including counterterrorism operations - in Iraq.

Iraq is the central battleground in the war on terror. The terrorists certainly know what is at stake, which is why they are pulling out all the stops to derail our efforts there. They know that a free and democratic Iraq is a serious blow to their interests.

The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs, the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons.

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.

The initial [Iraq] war was won in about 6 weeks, but the peace was lost soon thereafter.

Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.

We don't have enough American troops inside of Iraq to destroy ISIL any time soon.

I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake.

It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it.

I think we have to knock out ISIS. Right now Syria is fighting ISIS. We have people who want to fight both at the same time. But Syria is no longer Syria; Syria is Russia and Iran, who she made strong, and Kerry and Obama made into a very powerful nation and very rich nation very, very quickly. Very, very quickly. I believe we have to get ISIS.

The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.

A lot of these people are Iraqis fighting for control of their own government. Maybe there's an argument to make that outside forces that go in and start bombing that country or invading that country are actually terrorists more so than the people in the country.

I think what the president [Barack Obama] understands, and what he's trying to do, is that we have to support the Arab and Kurdish fighters on the ground who are actually doing the fighting.

You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in eighty countries by occupying Iraq.

The question now is how best to help the Iraqi people build a democratic and free Iraqi society that ensures respect for the rights of all Iraqis.

President al-Assad and his army are the only force that actually fights ISIS.

The agreement is fundamentally that we want to try to resolve this. The agreement is that ISIL is a threat to everybody, and we need to come together to find a way to fight ISIL. The agreement is that we want to save Syria, keep it unified, keep it secular. So surely in those very fundamental principles on which we could agree.

The best way to fight terrorism is to do it through a peaceful way. I believe that a war can never be ended by a war.

There is not going to be any pass for Palestinian leadership in fighting terror.

U.S. military action in Iraq: It sure didn't work out well last time. Let's not make that mistake again.

We cleared many of their towns and cities and rural areas of al-Qaida Iraq and other insurgents.

I don't know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.

I had said from the start that I thought Iraq was a mistake, that we should have stayed focused on Afghanistan. I think it was the right decision because the Taliban at that point had gotten a lot of momentum before I'd gotten into office, partly because we hadn't been paying attention as much as we needed to to Afghanistan.