Dick Cheney Quotes

There are a lot of things that have to be considered in National. The military aspect of it is only one of them. I'm confident that President Bush will have all of those things laid out for him before he makes the decision.

The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene. It is up to the civilians to tell us what they want to do and we’ll figure out how to do it.

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history... Our military men and women...were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters...?

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

Our safety requires a long-term military presence in the Middle East because that's where the plans to attack us are emanating.

Our national aims can be realized only by military means. The matter needs no further elaboration or interpretation.

Woe to the statesman whose reason for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning.

I could have been very popular if I had launched a military attack on Iran but I chose patience.

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

By invading Iraq, the President has undermined the War on Terrorism.

The Mutual Security Act was intended not to fight a war but to prevent a war.

Is a military solution the only way to stop nations from doing bad things?

Any future Defense Secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.

We can’t always pick and choose which conflicts were going to get into.

The military people don't like it; the government probably doesn't like it, but the people should know what they're sending their young people into when they permit their governments to declare war and engage in war.

I don't think people realize how many decisions the president of the United States makes about military action.

When Americans support using our military abroad, they want to see a clear plan. They want to know what they need to do and when - and policymakers want to know that there's broad public support for the effort.

Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work."

I think the President ought to bring everybody that's in American uniform back because we're headed for war.

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

Some of the same self-certified smart people, who preached about mushroom clouds and weapons of mass destruction, are once again trying to stampede us into war. They seem to think only with their guns. To those who want to shoot first and ask questions later in Iraq, I join in a firm 'No!' We've been there and done that, and America is still paying for their past failure.

Of course, there were huge disagreements in the arguments of military intervention, .. There is no point at the moment on focusing on those disagreements.