Hillary Clinton Quotes

We're making progress. Our military is assisting in Iraq. And we're hoping that within the year we'll be able to push ISIS out of Iraq and then, you know, really squeeze them in Syria.

In Iraq and Syria, American leadership - including our military power - is stopping ISIL's advance, instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group.

In 2016, Washington and its coalition partners conducted more than 7,000 strikes in Iraq and Syria. And in Libya, the United States has conducted more than 350 air strikes since August as part of its military campaign against ISIS there.

I think it would be great if we got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together, as an example.

We need a united front against Islamic State and Assad happens to be the decisive power that can fight them. But the situation is preposterous because we also have to respect the calls for change. I would be in favor of a dignified change.

We are very grateful for the vital contributions Germany has made to this fight, training local forces in Iraq, sharing intelligence providing reconnaissance aircraft including the recent deployment of additional NATO AWACS.

I think it would be great if America got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together.

The Russians haven't helped us at all in the fight against ISIS. When you total up the numbers of sorties that have been going into Syria, aircraft attacks, if you will, going into Syria, when the Russians said they were going to assist, we got a very small number of Russian sorties.

The good news is that the international coalition, in which our military contributes, has done a lot to reduce the ground space, the territory in Iraq, Syria that ISIL once occupied a couple years ago. That's a good thing. And a lot of that, frankly, has occurred in Trump administration, so I'll give them credit for that.

I think that Russia is very aware that they are on notice when it comes to certain issues. They are very aware that we do want to try and defeat ISIS together, if that's at all possible, along with our allies. But there's no love or anything going on with Russia right now. They get that we're getting our strength back, that we're getting our voice back, and that we're starting to lead again. And honestly, at the United Nations, that's the number one comment I get is they're just so happy to see the United States lead again.

The latest developments in Iraq are deeply troubling, but as the United States considers military and diplomatic responses to the actions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) action, we should be clear that U.S. troops on the ground cannot go a million miles near a sectarian civil war-it's simply not an option.

I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.

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 voted against the war in Iraq. I voted against the first Gulf War. I think war is the last resort - the last option of a great military power like us. I think that we need to focus on building coalitions. Yes, ISIS must be destroyed. But it should be destroyed by a coalition of Muslim nations on the ground with the support of the United States and the other major powers in the air and in training the troops there.

I see a bit of a contradiction between the fight against the Islamic State and the desire to remove the Assad regime. And even if you work with Russia, I'm just not sold that working with Russia is an effective way to hasten the end of the Assad regime or to enact any type of punitive measures.

No one except for al-Assad's army is fighting against ISIS or other terrorist organisations in Syria, no one else is fighting them on Syrian territory. Minor airstrikes, including those by the United States aircraft, do not resolve the issue in essence; in fact, they do not resolve it at all.

I think that all countries of the region should join their efforts in the fight against a common threat - terrorism in general and ISIS in particular. It concerns Iran as well, it concerns Saudi Arabia (although the two countries do not get along very well, ISIS threatens both of them), it concerns Jordan, it concerns Turkey (in spite of certain problems regarding the Kurdish issue), and, in my opinion, everybody is interested in resolving the situation. Our task is to join these efforts to fight against a common enemy.

The United States found dozens of billions of dollars for military action in Iraq, so it should certainly be able to find a few billions of dollars to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. I'll assume that since the most powerful nation - the United States - has promised to pay for much of this, then its word will be kept. If it isn't, I don't think we can have a true partnership.

The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy, we have Mosul. They think a lot of the ISIS leaders are in Mosul. So we have announcements coming out of Washington and coming out of Iraq, we will be attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks. Well, all of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly?

There are a lot of areas where we cooperate, fight against ISIL, for example. Here, Germany was able to contribute to a certain extent in certain areas.

I don't want to be overly critical about our military or our intelligence people, because it's a tough job. But neither should think be beating their breasts and saying what a wonderful job they did.

If you put two brigades on the ground right now with U.S. forces, they would push ISIS back into Syria in a heartbeat.

I don't think we should be engaged in nation-building. It's not our job to turn foreign nations into democratic utopias, to try to turn Iraq into Switzerland. It is the military's job to hunt down and kill our enemies, to kill ISIS before they murder American citizens and they wage jihad.

I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to explain as best I can why it's important for us to succeed in Iraq. I'm going to do what I think is right, and if, you know, if people don't like me for it, that's just the way it is.

It is an evil time but it is a complex time because we do not have uniforms standing in front of us. Instead, we have people in disguise. It is brutal. This ISIS thing - it is something we are going to devote a lot of energy to it. I think we are going to be very successful.