Robert M. Gates Quotes

The Invasion of Iraq is unwise, immoral and illegal.

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.

We were told by the president that we had no alternative but to go into Iraq because of the threat that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed, but to date, these weapons have not been found.

The truth was, there was never a connection between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden. There were no weapons of mass destruction, either.

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.

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.

Americans were told repeatedly by President Bush and Vice President Cheney that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. None were ever found.

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

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.

The Second World War is and was constantly being drudged up by Blair and Bush to rationalize the invasion of Iraq.

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.

Don't invade Iraq. Inspections work, war won't.

On the justification for the war, it wasn't related to finding any particular weapon of mass destruction.

There were no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein was not involved in the September 11th attack.

I think the Iraq War is not particularly tailored to American interests.

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.

It was pretty clear in 2002 to anyone in the intelligence community that is where we were headed.[To war with Iraq].

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

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.

I'm one of the ones who believed the Iraq War was a complete mistake from the very beginning.

Let's be clear: Neither Secretary Powell or I opposed the notion of removing Saddam Hussein by force, but we wanted to avoid the war if we could. But if we couldn't, the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from the scene seemed eminently sensible, given that you had, what, 16 or so U.N. Security Council resolutions basically saying the same thing.

There's a lot of revisionist history that goes on these days about Iraq.

It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we went to war in Iraq, that it is enough that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.

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.