Barack Obama Quotes

What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq?

The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong.

I look at what the president [Barack Obama] it doing, it adds up to me. We just have to keep - try to get more support for those people on the ground in Syria and Iraq who have to actually physically take the territory back.

I think the key anecdote in the book is when Colin [Powell] and I were discussing Iraq. Colin was upstairs in the Treaty Room, in the residence. And he talks about his concerns about the use of military in Iraq. And I said I felt the same concerns, but it might be that we have to use it. In which case, he said, "I support you."

Our safety at home and the cause of freedom abroad is largely contingent upon our success in Iraq.

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.

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

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is gonna have to ultimately provide for its own security.

When the commander-in-chief sends Americans to fight and die, it should be only to protect our vital national interests, not for his own personal, political gain.

There are a lot of things that have to be considered in National. The military aspect of it is only one of them. I'm confident that President Bush will have all of those things laid out for him before he makes the decision.

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

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

Woe to the statesman whose reason for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong.

This is not going to be decided by public opinion polls. It is a national security issue.

The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene. It is up to the civilians to tell us what they want to do and we’ll figure out how to do it.

I’d rather build highways here then try nation building in Iraq

No American President should ever take any option off the table.

By invading Iraq, the President has undermined the War on Terrorism.

We have to deal with it diplomatically if we can, militarily if we must.

I don't recall anyone who was strongly against except one man, and that was the President [JFK]. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do.... It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in.

A United States President should never, never, never, never threaten the use of force unless he is prepared to follow up.

I don’t think that we have ever had a coherent strategy on Iraq.

Should President Clinton have killed Osama bin Laden when he had the opportunity in 1990s? Should President Bush have sent the U.S. military into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein in 2003? Should President Obama have withdrawn all troops from Iraq in 2011? Such questions provide no real insight into future considerations.