Richard Engel Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when the British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.

I think in a sense this is a house that was built on a bad foundation. And the foundation was the Americans coming here and allowing the sacking, burning and plunder of Baghdad, for whatever reason.

No American soldier should be allowed to set foot on Iranian soil, regardless of the criticism we have of the Iranian government.

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

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

Where are the gains for religious freedom and human rights to justify all the bombings, invasions and wars we have conducted in the lands from Libya to Pakistan - to justify the losses we have endured and the death and suffering we have inflicted?

The invasion of Iraq was, in ways that have since become hard to dispute, a terrible mistake.

American POWs from the last Iraq war, who were held prisoner and tortured by Iraq, are now being prevented by our government from suing the Iraqis who tortured them.

Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers.

For President Clinton, according to this discussion I had with him, Rwanda was a marginal problem.

I'm sorry that I can't snap my fingers and undo 50 years of bad American foreign policy.

It was a mistake. On the information we had, we shouldn't have prosecuted the war. We shouldn't have changed our argument from international law to regime change in a non-transparent way. It was an error for which we as a country paid a heavy price, and for which many people paid with their lives.

The international community is unwilling to accept the policies of the Iranian regime.

When a peace agreement is concluded between the Lebanese government and Israel, we would surely disagree with the Lebanese government about that, but we would not make any turmoil out of it.

Instead, we did take our eye off the ball. We decided, instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, to go into Iraq. And today, unfortunately, if you look at the situation on the ground, it is a mess.

The war in Iraq has as much to do with terrorism as the administration has to do with compassion.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Army invaded two Caribbean countries, Grenada and Panama, to depose leaders who had defied Washington.

If we speak calmly, in a businesslike fashion, let me draw your attention to the fact that Russia supplies arms to the legitimate government of Syria in full compliance with the norms of international law. We are not breaching any rules and norms.

The U.S. government engages with many countries around the world in official dialogues on human rights.

The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.

Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad, under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government, education and other services for the people of Iraq.