King Hussein Quotes

In July of 2004, I came out strongly against the war with Iraq because it was going to destabilize the Middle East.

When Bush first got elected, the very first time there was talk of going to war with Iraq, the mainstream media gave his position total credibility. I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now.

We've killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war - mostly by blocking humanitarian aid.

I mean, we're going to probably debate the Iraq war for at least as long as I'm alive.

President George H. W. Bush soon launched Operation Desert Shield, sending an enormous contingent of troops to Saudi Arabia. But once there, what exactly were they to do? Contain Iraq? Attack and liberate Kuwait? Drive on to Baghdad and depose Saddam? There was no clear consensus among foreign policy advisers or analysts.

It is high time that the international community tell Saddam Hussein and his regime that this is not an issue of negotiation with the U.N. about obligations that they undertook in 1991.

I would not plan to base my campaign primarily on opposition to the war in the Persian Gulf.

Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement.

We cannot undo the past in this misguided war in Iraq.

I will listen to Mr Bush but my position is very clear and very firm. The occupation is a fiasco. There have been almost more deaths after the war than during the war.

As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a 'war of choice' whose costs we are still paying.

Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.

That was one of the great successes of removing Saddam Hussein, as we took Iraq out of the picture of having a sovereign nation from which the terrorists could operate. But this war has not gone perfectly.

The first time I went to Iraq was October 2002, when Saddam was still in power, and then, subsequently, in January of 2003, about three-and-a-half months before the U.S. invasion. So, I got to see the before and after of Iraq, basically, before and after the war.

The issue of what my role in the - in persuading the Bush administration to go to war has been greatly exaggerated.

We went into Iraq because Iraq posed a threat to the stability of the region and was engaged in the process of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.

The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular.

When I first arrived in Baghdad in January 2003, I thought I would soon rent a house and envisioned myself swimming in the Tigris to cool off after reporting in the city the caliphs called Madinit al-Salam, the City of Peace. A year later, I realized I wouldn't be taking any midnight dips - Madinat al-Salam no more.

Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure.

We should have done more damage to the Iraqi forces before they withdrew from the Kuwaiti theater.

I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth.

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

Don't invade Iraq. Inspections work, war won't.

'The war in Iraq - if Osama was a Christian - it's the Christmas present he never would have expected.

I think the Iraq War is not particularly tailored to American interests.