Ted Rall Quotes

In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption.

Iraq did nothing to us. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11.

What is the first thing we did when we took control of Iraq? Protect the oil fields. Remember the administration quote about how the oil would pay for the war.

The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.

The war on Iraq was a disaster, clearly carried out under false pretences.

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

Right now, I have nothing against America, except for the fact that it opposes the Palestinian people, and is destroying Iraq. Apart from this, America and I agree on everything.

I support the current operational position and tactics in Iraq, but we’re in a bad place, we didn’t need to be there, and we shouldn’t do it again.

And now the liberals want to stop President Reagan from selling chemical warfare agents and military equipment to Saddam Hussein and why? Because Saddam 'allegedly' gassed a few Kurds in his own country. Mark my words. All of this talk of Saddam Hussein being a 'war criminal' or 'committing crimes against humanity' is the same old thing. LIBERAL HATE SPEECH!

…The invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake in American history. We invaded a country that was no threat to us…. We have lost so much of our world prestige and world leadership.

I landed in Kabul the day before Shock and Awe in Iraq, and you could all but hear the collective groan.

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.

The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can't control it and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries. Earlier, there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Granada, Panama. But this time it wasn't just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was frenzy with a purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the doctrine of preemptive strike, also known as the United States can do whatever the hell it wants, and that's official. The war against Iraq has been fought and won, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found, not even a little one.

The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age.

It's great that we're bringing democracy to Iraq. I can't wait to see how we do it! What are we gonna do, give them our civics textbooks?

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.

The President reminded us that the war in Iraq is a central battlefield in the war on terror that began the morning of September the 11th.

The thing that's most uppermost in my mind and will continue to be until I hit a brick wall is that I am dead serious, dead serious about going after George Bush, trying to get him into an American courtroom and prosecute him for what happened in Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.

Speaker John Boehner complained that Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military into combat in Libya without clearly defining the mission to the American people and Congress. See, apparently, you're only allowed to do that when invading Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.

ISIS is a monstrosity. It didn't come from nowhere. It's one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society - Iraq - with a sledgehammer.

The only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that.

The torture and other sadistic abuses of prisoners in Iraq have done immense damage already to America's reputation in the world, and the worst may be yet to come. Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management.