Adam Schiff Quotes

Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.

We paid a big price for not stopping it -- that is the looting and the security -- because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We never had enough troops on the ground

The solution to Iraq - an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself - is more than a military mission. Precisely the reason why I sent more troops into Baghdad.

We shouldn't knee jerk anything. The Iraqi government a few years back, when they had a chance to sign an agreement that would keep some of our presence there, refused to do it. So we've got to be very careful and thoughtful before we do anything.

As far as I'm concerned there shouldn't be a single boot on the ground. There's enough American blood in Iraq that lasts forever.

I don't want to have anything to do with the government. And yet if we don't have any regulations, there goes civilization, there goes security, and there goes protecting you against what people are going to sell you.

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

The Government of Iraq also owes a debt to the American and coalition forces who are fighting the insurgency and helping put that country back together after decades of repression.

There have been linkages between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda going back more or less a decade.

We need to continue our full support of the nascent Iraqi government by helping to rebuild their economic infrastructure and maintain security while training the Iraqi security forces.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.

We need to make it clear that we will withdraw from Iraq within 6 to 9 months - so that the Iraqis will know that they must stand up and defend the opportunity given to them.

If we want to build the Iraqis' confidence about our intentions in their country, if we want to stop adding fuel to the fire of insurgency and terrorism, we must clarify our intent.

The face of terrorism in Iraq is dead. Abu Musab al Zarqawi brutalized, tortured, and killed thousands of innocent people, forcing Iraqis to live in fear. The Iraqi people finally had enough, and gave up his whereabouts to the Iraqi security forces.

Certainly our goal is to leave Iraq, but we can't leave Iraq with our forces until we know that the Iraqi security forces are capable and efficient enough to defend the sovereignty of the nation.

You can't succeed in beating the insurgents unless you can convince the people that they can be protected.

And we need to maintain our foothold in the fight against terrorism and terrorist groups and respond to any degradation of Iraqi security or stability.

Measures calculated to insure a continuance of the friendship of the Indians and to preserve peace along the extent of our interior frontier have been digested and adopted. In the framing of these care has been taken to guard on the one hand our advanced settlements from the predatory incursions of those unruly individuals who can not be restrained by their tribes, and on the other hand to protect the rights secured to the Indians by treaty - to draw them nearer to the civilized state and inspire them with correct conceptions of the power as well as justice of the Government.

We have to go in and win this war quickly, and then be prepared to help stabilize Iraq over an indefinite period, five to ten years, at a minimum, I believe, using a large fraction of American forces. This is a major undertaking that likely would require a total of 150,000 troops and could stay above 100,000 for several years

Necessary to keep Iraqi army intact for a specified period of time. Serves as a ready resource pool for labor-intensive civil works projects

Within 120 days, we’ll win this war and get all U.S. troops out of the country, except 30,000

Security and peace are not cheap.

The nation’s priority is stability.

Very great riches in private men are always dangerous to states, because they create greater dependence than can be consistent with the security of any sort of government whatsoever; they place subjects upon too near a level with their sovereigns; make the nobility stand upon too great an inequality in respect of one another; destroy amongst the Commons, that balance of property and power, which is necessary to democracy, or the democratic part of any government, overthrow the poise of it, and indeed alter its nature, though not its name.