Stephen Harper Quotes

The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

Well, what I've said is that the war in Iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of nuclear - weapons of mass destruction.

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

The decision to attack Iraq in March 2003 was discretionary; it was a war of choice.

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.

The Second World War is and was constantly being drudged up by Blair and Bush to rationalize the invasion of Iraq.

We were told by the president that we had no alternative but to go into Iraq because of the threat that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed, but to date, these weapons have not been found.

President Bush comes up with a reason a day as to why we are in Iraq.

It was pretty clear in 2002 to anyone in the intelligence community that is where we were headed.[To war with Iraq].

The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq without pausing to ask why. Why is war being dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort?

The United States of America, justifiably and proudly, went to war in Afghanistan in early winter of 2001. The United States invaded Iraq on a false premise in the spring of 2003.

We have concluded that the U.K. chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.

Let's be clear: Neither Secretary Powell or I opposed the notion of removing Saddam Hussein by force, but we wanted to avoid the war if we could. But if we couldn't, the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from the scene seemed eminently sensible, given that you had, what, 16 or so U.N. Security Council resolutions basically saying the same thing.

In searching for a rationale to go to war, Bush settled on the notion of Saddam as an incarnation of evil, basically, and convinced himself that Saddam was fundamentally Adolf Hitler reborn. I think his feelings towards Saddam were in fact quite genuine and quite legitimately hostile. He was not play acting.

The consequence of Mr. Bush's and Blair's historic lie that the reason for invading Iraq was weapons of mass destruction, is that everything is being doubted.

We went into Iraq because Iraq posed a threat to the stability of the region and was engaged in the process of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.

So to recap: we may or may not be going to war with Iraq because Saddam may or may not have weapons of mass destruction, which he may or may not use, or pass to other terrorists groups with whom he may or may not have links.

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

We are at war to liberate Iraq, to protect the people of the United States and other countries from the devastating impact of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists or the Iraqi government to kill thousands of innocent civilians.

To the contrary, I believe the U.S. military has already done all that has been asked of them. Saddam Hussein is on trial. The threat from alleged weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq has been neutralized.

Genius, scholar, and war hero though he is, you have to admit - or maybe you should think about admitting - that George Bush might have rushed things a little in invading Iraq.

My level of cynicism about the reasons that took us to war against Iraq remain just as well-developed as they were before I went.

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

The liberation of Iraq was part of a broader effort to seriously confront the greatest threat to world security: rogue states capable of obtaining long range weapons of mass destruction.