Robert Fisk Quotes

One of the extraordinary features of the Blair government has been its slavish support for the central tenets of Bush's foreign policy - above all, the war in Iraq. During the Cold War, the Wilson government resisted the suggestion that it should send troops to Vietnam.

America responded to the 9-11 attacks by invading Iraq, only to discover that Saddam Hussein had palaces of mass luxury, not weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq is an unjust war. I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

History should remember Blair and Bush as the killers of children or as the lying prime minister and president.

…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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We're not going to spread democracy at the business end of a M16 held by a 23 year old Marine.

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

Unless the president can make a very compelling case that Saddam Hussein has his finger on a weapon of mass destruction and is about ready to use it, I do not think that now is the time to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

Tony Blair took us to war in Iraq on the basis of the supposed threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

I will listen to Mr Bush but my position is very clear and very firm. The occupation is a fiasco. There have been almost more deaths after the war than during the war.

My journalistic mission was straightforward: to await the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nobody knew quite when this would be. But the diplomacy - the meetings in the U.N. security council, the allegations about weapons of mass destruction, the martial language of Tony Blair and George W. Bush - all suggested a war was brewing.

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

Today, war of necessity is used by critics of military action to describe unavoidable response to an attack like that on Pearl Harbor that led to our prompt, official declaration of war, while they characterize as unwise wars of choice the wars in Korea, Vietnam and the current war in Iraq.

Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize Bush to take the nation to war. Most of them did so in the belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace.

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.

What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war?

I am absolutely certain that George W. Bush did what he believed he had to do, in order to protect his country from the world of evil… The sad thing is that he was so deeply, deeply wrong.

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?

In order to have defense here at home, we have to have offense in Iraq and Iran.

We had Iraq contained. They couldn’t hurt their neighbors; they couldn’t hurt us. They would fire at our planes now and then but they never hit anything. They were not involved in 9-11. I advised that a small force could take Iraq, but it would take a huge force to prevent the Sunnies and the Shiites from killing each other….I told that to the Joint Chiefs, but I don’t think they were consulted. The President made the decision.