Stephen Kinzer Quotes

It was at a certain stage (you might have forgotten, haven't you?) that the United States actively collaborated with Saddam when he was at war with Iran: weapons were supplied, diplomatic and political support was provided and so on. Then the US fell out with him for some reason and decided to do away with him.

What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn't be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis - a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis - that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.

By ending the Hussein regime, the United States has taken away yet another incubator of terrorism.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

The fall of Arab autocrats creates more risks than opportunities for the United States. As Arab political horizons expand, the space for America to pursue its interest may well contract.

Saudi Arabia needs friends. We are in a war in Yemen, in a confrontation with Iran, so we need friends like Canada, Europe.

Prior to his takeover of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was camping near Paris, giving daily news conferences to a fawning international press corps without a murmur of complaint to France from the United States about the disaster it was coddling in the incredibly naive liberal belief that this extremist cleric would be an improvement over the Shah.

Once in 1979, [Zbigniew] Brzezinski gave an important slogan: "Bye-bye PLO." After two months, I was in Tehran saying to him: "Bye-bye Brzezinski." Who can imagine that America will lose one of its strongest bases?

We've seen what happened in Libya, what a disaster that's been driven by Hillary Clinton, and the disaster in Syria and almost disaster in Egypt. What a close call that's been. We're not out of the woods yet with Egypt.

Israeli government & the neocons want US to bomb Iran.

The fact is that the American government and NATO have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. Their next targets will be Syria and Iran.

Our safety at home and the cause of freedom abroad is largely contingent upon our success in Iraq.

Osama bin Laden is going after us to get us out of the region, so he can deal with the regimes that he sees in the region, or replace them with purists.

There's a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration's problem, which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous.

I did more than anyone else in persuading the U.S. to get rid of Saddam.

The fall of the Syrian regime is in the interest of America and Israel.

In addition, it is very likely that United States action in Iraq caused Iran to open its nuclear facilities for international inspection and suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

In the post-9/11 world you cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. As a result of our going into Iraq, not only is Saddam Hussein gone, but Qaddafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction and tremendous progress is being made in Iraq.

The reason the United States is not so likely to invade Iran is precisely because of the lessons learned from Iraq. And conversely, the Iranian push towards nuclear capability is calculated to deter invasions like the kind deposing Saddam Husain.

The only one who thinks the world is safer since the occupation of Iraq is Bush.

There is very little hope that the United States or anyone else can do much to stabilize Iraq, Libya, Syria or Egypt. Stabilizing Iran, and bringing it back into the family of nations, is much more possible. That would be a 'win' for both sides.

When we see a lack of leadership coming from the White House, that's what brings leaders in Turkey to attack Israel the way they do. When we see a lack of leadership coming from the White House, that's why we see the leader of Iran... continuing to build the nuclear reactors.

We need somebody ready to be commander-in-chief on day one, who understands there are no moderates in Iran; they've been killed a long time ago.

After spending the 1980s building up Saddam's Iraq as a counterweight to Iran, U.S. policy abruptly reversed course with his invasion of Kuwait and has since tried to cut him down to size. The policy is called 'containment,' but the question is, containment of what?