Ted Cruz Quotes

Where we have a different background [with Hillary Clinton] on this issue is we differ on the war in Iraq, which created barbaric organizations like ISIS.

President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq.

Obama has committed the U.S. to war on the Islamic State. To then allow within a month an allied enclave to be overrun - and perhaps annihilated - would be a major blow.

I recommended to the president [George Bush] that our focus had to be on al-Qaida, the Taliban and Afghanistan. Those were the ones who attacked the United States of America on 9/11.

The White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

I'm the leading voice in America for not arming the allies of ISIS.

So a truthful assessment of how America is doing in the war on terror as a result of President Bush's war on Iraq is that we have been set back by decades.

In order to have defense here at home, we have to have offense in Iraq and Iran.

We believe US threats of an approaching World War III and their use of Iran's nuclear issue as an excuse is another form of American insanity.

I think there are a number of issues that we should be addressing. I have put forth a plan to defeat ISIS.

We need a president who stands up, number one, and says, we will defeat ISIS. And number two, says the greatest national security threat facing America is a nuclear Iran.

Hillary Clinton's policies unleashed ISIS, spread terrorism and put Iran on a path to nuclear weapons.

I think it is essential that America does not stumble into a stupid war with Iran.

Don’t be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn’t turn Iran into a friend of America.

The United States of America is engaged in a war against an extremist group of folks.

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

I supported the war in Afghanistan because 3000 of our people were murdered and I thought we had a right to defend the people of the United States.

Secretary Clinton is talking about taking out ISIS. "We will take out ISIS." Well, President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq, because they got out - what, they shouldn't have been in, but once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed.

Conservatives believe that we need to defeat radical Islam not because we want war but because ISIS and other radical Islamist are enemies of peace and that's why we need a president, who in which under whom the best intelligence agencies in the world will find terrorists and the best military in the world will destroy them. And if we capture them alive, a president that will bring them to the United States. A president that will grant them a court-appointed lawyer, a president that will send these terrorists where they belong, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

By threatening war against Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his now-famous "Axis of Evil" address, the president painted himself into a corner. Either Bush now goes to war against one of these regimes, or he will be humiliated and exposed as a bellicose bluff.

The L.A. Times reports that al Qaeda terrorists have been traced to Iran, and President Bush is talking tough. In fact he said he will attack the minute he has evidence his approval rating is under 45 percent.

To honor the people that died, we need to stop the Iran agreement, for sure, because the Iranian mullahs have their blood on their hands, and we need to take out ISIS with every tool at our disposal.

Our primary threat today is ISIS. And because Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement that would have allowed some American combat troops to remain in Iraq and secure the hard fought gains the American soldier had won by 2009, ISIS was able to be literally conjured up out of the desert, and it's overrun vast areas that the American soldier had won in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?

I don't believe Iran is a suicide state.