Chuck Hagel Quotes

The war in Iraq has been extremely divisive here at home, and has also divided the world community.

Nations want the United States to fight their wars, until they go bad.

The Iraq War is an incredibly strategic blunder of enormous proportions …. There was not an exit strategy because the people planning this war didn’t intend to leave.

Could you imagine if the U.N. had endorsed the war in Iraq, what our reputation would be like?

I think that my darkest moment was the Iraq war and the fact that we could not stop it.

The war in Iraq, clearly has not turned out in the way that was hoped.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

One of the sharp parallels is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq was the slightest threat to America's national security.

I don't think that the war serves U.S. interests. I think Osama bin Laden's interests and the Iranian interests are very much served by it, and it's becoming a huge drain on our resources both material and political.

The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.

I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.

I mean, we're going to probably debate the Iraq war for at least as long as I'm alive.

I certainly am not willing to involve the country in a foreign war for the object of acquiring Texas.

More and more countries, mostly all countries, do not want large American forces on their soil. That’s a reality. We can live in the denial of that, but we are also living in the reality of that.

I don’t think that we have ever had a coherent strategy on Iraq.

A World War with its incalculable ramifications will strengthen social democracy which sermonizes the virtues of peace. War could easily cost some rulers their thrones.

…The invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake in American history. We invaded a country that was no threat to us…. We have lost so much of our world prestige and world leadership.

I'm one of the ones who believed the Iraq War was a complete mistake from the very beginning.

Anti-U.S. sentiment has been born out of many grievances - support and weapons for such dictators as Mubarak, unquestionable support for Israel in its occupation of Palestine, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen that kill more civilians than intended targets.

The war in Iraq has fractured the political will of the United States and the world.

Certainly, if we had not invaded Iraq on intelligence that was clearly manipulated and cherry picked, we would be in a different position today.

In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors.

It doesn't take much insight to realize that wars have been getting worse every time - worse from the point of view of the civilian, more and more destructive, more and more total.

The 2003 war in Iraq may be considered the greatest error in American policy since the Civil War. Its ramifications are earth-shattering and will impact us and our safety for generations. It may completely unravel the entire Middle East forever.