Barack Obama Quotes

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

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.

The president made clear when he was a candidate for this office and when he took this office, that unfortunately prior to his taking office, because of the focus on Iraq, and the U.S. efforts there, that the original war, if you will, in Afghanistan had been neglected, the strategy there was unclear, and that it was not properly resourced.

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

America's foreign policy lacks the backbone to do the right thing in Afghanistan - which is leave.

America went into Iraq. We shouldn't have gone into Iraq. We shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. The world is a total mess.

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.

I think the war in the Mideast, how we got into it and how we're going to address the current problems, are issues that every American should be concerned about.

I agree with the president [Barack Obama]. I've said myself, we will not send American combat troops back to either Syria or Iraq - that is off the table.

The war with Iraq ... had to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in military history. Attacked by a gang composed largely of Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, the United States countered by invading an unrelated country, and one of the most secular in the Middle East at that.

It's very hard to understand just what our strategy is in Syria, frankly, and on Iraq that this is Iraq's war, that the role of the United States is to help Iraq, to arm, train, support, provide air support, but this has to be Iraq's war.

At least, it is encouraging to me that President [Barack] Obama has put Afghanistan front and center in this broader so-called War on terror, and that he is taking a different approach to Afghanistan.

I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps.

It's just a matter of time before we go into Iraq and get Saddam Hussein. I think just before Bush falls below 50 percent, that's when we'll be going.

I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.

The big issue is whether the United States will succeed in its venture of reshaping the Middle East. It is not clear to me that using military force is the way to do it. We should not have gone into Iraq. But we have.

I believe that the president's (Bush) leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers.

I also think regime change in Syria is a bad idea. And that's an ongoing question. It's one of the things I like about Donald Trump, one of the reasons I endorsed him is he thinks regime change is a mistake. But John Bolton thinks completely the opposite. They are diametric opposites.

I'm hopeful that after Iraq, those in charge will think twice about taking us down that route again.

We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the U.S. has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

Instead, we did take our eye off the ball. We decided, instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, to go into Iraq. And today, unfortunately, if you look at the situation on the ground, it is a mess.

My conviction is that the best strategy to defend the West is to defend Israel.

After spending the 1980s building up Saddam's Iraq as a counterweight to Iran, U.S. policy abruptly reversed course with his invasion of Kuwait and has since tried to cut him down to size. The policy is called 'containment,' but the question is, containment of what?

After September 11, when the United States took action to overthrow the Taliban, our interests and Iran's aligned, and we were able to coordinate quietly but effectively.