John Spratt Quotes

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.

It's also much clearer how much damage the occupation of Iraq is doing to America's reputation and prestige around the world; and that's just starting now to hit home in the United States.

Shrouded by the 'dodgy dossier,' which warped opaque intelligence, none of the stated war aims in Iraq spoke to the British national interest. Illusory dreams of bringing Western-style democracy to the Middle East were punctured by failures of planning and strategy, as catalogued before the Chilcot Inquiry.

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.

When I first arrived in Baghdad in January 2003, I thought I would soon rent a house and envisioned myself swimming in the Tigris to cool off after reporting in the city the caliphs called Madinit al-Salam, the City of Peace. A year later, I realized I wouldn't be taking any midnight dips - Madinat al-Salam no more.

We realize too late that President Bush shouldn't have taken us into Iraq, and President Obama shouldn't have taken us out.

Had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like a dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of that occupation.

The American surge of combat forces into Baghdad that was ordered by President Bush worked. And there was a calm, a relative calm that descended on the country kind of late 2008. That pretty much held until the last American combat soldiers left at the end of 2011.

I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it. I am especially worried about the extreme difficulty of occupying Iraq with its history of autocratic rule, its balkanized ethnic tensions, and its isolated economic system. Our regime might be rejected by the Iraqi people, leading to civil unrest and even anarchy.

The occupation of Iraq is completely self-perpetuating: The worse things get the more we are obliged to stay. And the longer we stay the worse things get.

The initial [Iraq] war was won in about 6 weeks, but the peace was lost soon thereafter.

Rumsfeld and Cheney and the President made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction. And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error…

The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.

The U.K. military role in Iraq ended a very long way from success.

The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can't control it and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

The centerpiece of the Bush administration's case for going to war in Iraq was Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, six weeks before the invasion.

The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and coalition partners stands as one of the greatest blunders in American history. The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, rose out of the the chaos, throwing the region into turmoil that hasn't been equaled since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

I didn't see Saddam Hussein as being quite the danger that some other people did.

The Nisour Square shooting is a signature point in the Iraq war, one that inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad and contributed to the impression that Americans were reckless and unaccountable. The Iraqi government wanted to prosecute the security contractors in Iraq, but the American government refused to allow it.

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.

When 'Fire and Fury' came out, I thought Steve Bannon would certainly never speak to me again, and the truth is, he never stopped speaking.

The Iraqi people will not allow any country to take possession of their own resources.

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.

I know a way for no Americans to die in Iraq: Leave.