Joby Warrick Quotes

All around the world one heard or read that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

But there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The first weekend after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush had a meeting at Camp David with his top advisors, including Colin Powell, the secretary of state. And there was a lively debate about Iraq policy, in which some people from the Pentagon were arguing that the war against terrorism should include Saddam Hussein.

There's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

There have been linkages between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda going back more or less a decade.

The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab world.

The centerpiece of the Bush administration's case for going to war in Iraq was Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, six weeks before the invasion.

Contrary to what the Americans frequently reiterated, al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime.

At the end of the day, Iraq was a part of the fight against terrorism.

Iraq is now the central front in the war against al-Qaeda.

The world is a better place with Saddam Hussein gone.

As we have heard, the end of al-Zarqawi is a significant blow to al-Qaida operations in Iraq. It is another clear indication of the progress we are making.

We are safer, the region is safer, the world is safer without Saddam.

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.

I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency.

When Americans invade Iraq, Bush says, we will be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people, proving that taking out Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do.

In the post-9/11 world you cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. As a result of our going into Iraq, not only is Saddam Hussein gone, but Qaddafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction and tremendous progress is being made in Iraq.

Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.

There were no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein was not involved in the September 11th attack.

The reality is, it will be a significant conflict going for many, many months, if not longer. Saddam Hussein is not a fool. He hasn't been sitting there waiting to get shot for 13 years.

The truth was, there was never a connection between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden. There were no weapons of mass destruction, either.

You can’t separate the struggle against the Baathists (of Iraq) from the struggle against global terrorism.

I don’t know how to define a terrorist organization.

Prior to 9-11, we did not have a single intelligence agent inside Iraq.

What bin Laden had hoped to achieve in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 period, which was to drag the United States into a protracted guerrilla war like the one he had fought against the Soviets, never happened. Instead, that protracted guerrilla war is now playing out in Iraq, in the heart of the Middle East.