Kofi Annan Quotes

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

The international community unfortunately did take sides in Libya, and we would never allow the Security Council to authorise anything similar to what happened in Libya.

To sum up, the position we took was that since we didn't know the internal situation in Iraq nor Saddam Hussein, that our best bet was to take counsel from the people who did know him and who did deal with him.

I don't think we would have had to be an occupying power if we had done the right thing in 1991.

By linking these countries together in his 'axis of evil' speech, President Bush implied an identity between them not only in terms of their threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat. A lot of work will now need to be done to delink the three, and to show why military action against Iraq is so much more justified than against Iran and North Korea.

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.

The Americans are stuck in Iraq and have no way out. They are like a wolf whose tail has been caught in a trap.

The United States must reach out to the world community with a new plan to stabilize Iraq, bring U.N. peacekeepers in, and bring U.S. troops home.

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.

I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations.

Regime change has been an American policy under the Clinton administration, and it is the current policy. I support the policy. But regime change in and of itself is not sufficient justification for going to war--particularly unilaterally--unless regime change is the only way to disarm Iraq of the weapons of mass destruction pursuant to the United Nations resolution.

If the United States marches into Iraq without the backing of the United Nations, that will be done entirely without the backing of the American people.

Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity.

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq.

No one wants to abandon the Israelis. But I think the perception is, and I think it's probably an accurate perception, that the tail is leading the dog - that we are giving the Israelis carte blanche ability to exercise whatever they want to do in their area.

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.

It's true that the question of Iraq divided Europe.

One of the enduring mysteries of America's occupation of Iraq is why a nation that so little relishes peacekeeping nonetheless refuses to turn the job over to the United Nations.

Taking a principled and consistent stance over Iraq has attracted much criticism from our detractors and opponents.

If a senator calls me up and asks me what should we do in Iraq, I'm happy to talk to him.

Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.

The war in Iraq has as much to do with terrorism as the administration has to do with compassion.

You'd better believe that Putin sees that in Syria, Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line.

If the United States leads a multinational force into Iraq without United Nations backing, Canada should fight beside its neighbour. We've gone from being a middle power to a muddle power on this one.

You should never take military intervention off the table. When you do so, you give an out to a rogue nation or rogue actors.