Yaroslav Trofimov Quotes

I've said before: If Osama bin Laden was a Christian, Iraq was the Christmas present he always wanted but never expected his parents to give. It validated for the Muslim world virtually all of bin Laden's rhetoric. He had always said the Americans will destroy any strong Muslim regime, and we did.

The reality in Iraq is that we are creating new terrorists and severely damaging the public impression of the United States in the Muslim world.

100,000 soldiers are reported to have died in the Iraqi war. If you count 100 relatives of each soldier, it means that practically there are millions of people who now have antagonism toward the white people of America. These Arab people will remember this country whose main religion is Christianity, who came and destroyed all Iraqi facilities and industry. They won't easily forget this.

The Iraq War is largely about oil.

Here’s how bizarre the war is that we’re in Iraq, and we should have known this right from the get-go: When we first went into Iraq, Germany didn’t want to go. Germany. The Michael Jordan of war took a pass.

Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity.

Continuous wars - which we have now had since 2001 - starting with Afghanistan, continuing on to Iraq. And even since Iraq, it's been more or less continuous. The appalling war in Libya, which has wrecked that country and wrecked that part of the world, and which isn't over by any means. The indirect Western intervention in Syria, which has created new monsters. These are policies, which if carried out by any individual government, would be considered extremist. Now, they're being carried out collectively by the United States, backed by some of the countries of the European Union.

I was against the war with Iraq. First of all, they didn't knock down the World Trade Centre. It wasn't Iraq that knocked down the World Trade Centre.

When Time magazine conducted a poll in Europe in March [2003] asking which of three - North Korea, Iraq, or the United States - was the biggest threat to world peace, a whopping 86.9% answered the United States.

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.

The war with Iraq ... had to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in military history. Attacked by a gang composed largely of Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, the United States countered by invading an unrelated country, and one of the most secular in the Middle East at that.

[the war in Iraq] "could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East

The United States invaded Iraq to gain control of one of the major sources of the world's energy.

I am worried because I'm hearing some of the same signals about Iran and its nuclear program that were heard as the Bush administration made its case for the war in Iraq. 'It's déjà vu all over again.

Think of Iraq as "East Korea," because it was a shoot the cuffs war for the edification of Kim Jong Il to let him know we've now circled the SUVs. Iraq was about breaking adhesions, getting lean, staying frosty - in short, getting ready for the big Doug MacArthur Memorial Cage Match to come.

We're dealing with such enormous problems today that we have no other choice but to work together. If Iraq fails, if a religious civil war breaks out and the neighboring states are drawn into this conflict, if the Kurds declare independence and al-Qaida takes over an entire province - that's when the consequences will be dramatic.

We are helping the people that [George W.]Bush says are evil. Teheran couldn't be happier about the high oil prices resulting from the Iraq war.

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 very hard to understand just what our strategy is in Syria, frankly, and on Iraq that this is Iraq's war, that the role of the United States is to help Iraq, to arm, train, support, provide air support, but this has to be Iraq's war.

The war in Iraq was unwinnable.

We made this inexplicable turn into Iraq, where we've lost lives, money, honour and the coalition on [George] Bush's watch. Surely he's not suggesting that if the Democrats win, things can get worse. I mean, all we can do now is to look at our field policy and change the course. We need more diplomatic outreach toward Iran, Syria and Middle Eastern allies, and less bluster and less threats, and fewer troops.

Taking stock of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' a decade later, the Financial Times concluded that the US won the war, Iran won the peace, and Turkey won the contracts. I can only agree.

I find it hard to imagine that future historians will see the Iraq War as a big plus in Bush's ledger, but we have to admit that we simply don't know for sure.

I mean, of course that's a theoretical question, and we don't know what it would be for, and we don't know how many numbers there are. I am against American combat troops being in Syria and Iraq.

After a decade of war you have this Pentagon-military apparatus run amok using resources that they shouldn't be to try to manipulate U.S. public opinion.