Joseph R. Biden Jr. Quotes

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong.

I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place

President Bush admitted that the United States went to war in Iraq based on bad intelligence. But he says knowing what we know now he would still do it again. So at least we're learning from our mistakes.

I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday.

(Obama) really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time.

The president made clear when he was a candidate for this office and when he took this office, that unfortunately prior to his taking office, because of the focus on Iraq, and the U.S. efforts there, that the original war, if you will, in Afghanistan had been neglected, the strategy there was unclear, and that it was not properly resourced.

I said, going into Iraq, "We've got to take threats seriously before they full materialize." I saw a threat. I fully believe it was the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein, and I fully believe the world is better off without him.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war without knowing what she was doing, I would not have had our people in Iraq. Iraq was disaster.

The Americans are stuck in Iraq and have no way out. They are like a wolf whose tail has been caught in a trap.

The United States must reach out to the world community with a new plan to stabilize Iraq, bring U.N. peacekeepers in, and bring U.S. troops home.

Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.

New Rule: The people of America who were most in favor of the Iraq War must now go there and fight it.

I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately.

On the issue of Iraq, it is my hope, and my challenge to my colleagues, that our debate will be based on what is best for the future of our nation and for Iraq, not what's best for a political party or presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton failed to mention that her agreement with a precipitous withdrawal and declaration of victory in 2011 helped left swaths of territory and weaponry from ISIS. She failed to mention that she described Bashar al-Assad as a positive reformer and opened an American embassy. She failed to mention a complete failure strategy in Libya, which now is enabling ISIS to move into Libya.

How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat? If we had not acted, Saddam Hussein and his sons would still be in power.

Iraq is sort of a situation where you've got a guy who drove the bus into the ditch. You obviously have to get the bus out of the ditch, and that's not easy to do, although you probably should fire the driver.

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.

I think America should amass a strategy for success, and set out the milestones. We need to help the Iraqis get their democracy up and running, we've got to help them train their military and police and security people, and we've got to start moving out.

I was against the war in Iraq.The record shows that I'm right. When I did an interview with Howard Stern.

The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light - through the prism of our experience on 9/11.

Hillary Clinton gave us ISIS, because her and Obama created this huge vacuum, and a small group came out of that huge vacuum because when - we should never have been in Iraq, but once we were there, we should have never got out the way they wanted to get out.

President Bush announced he has a five-point strategy for getting out of Iraq. Points six through 10 will be handled by the Kerry administration.

I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.

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.