“Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq.”

— George Soros

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)
Context: Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq. Iran and North Korea are moving ahead with their nuclear programs at full speed and our hand in dealing with them has been greatly weakened.

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George Soros 99

Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanth… 1930

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“Where he's wrong is that we went into Iraq at the invitation of the government, not as an invasion.”

Dick Morris (1947) American political commentator and consultant

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2008-08-22
Fox News, quoted in * Dick Morris: ‘We Went Into Iraq At The Invitation Of The Government, Not As An Invasion’
2008-08-22
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/08/22/28028/dick-morris-iraq-stumped/

“To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq’s future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.

“Because if we had gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U. S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, you've got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. The other thing is casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had, but for the 146 Americans killed in action and for the families it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein was, how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Cheney, on not pushing on to Baghdad during the first Gulf War; C-SPAN 4-15-94 Interview on CNN http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/13/sitroom.03.html
1990s

“Maybe he one day - perhaps we will have to wait for his memoirs - could account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all, which is the illegal invasion of Iraq.”

Nick Clegg (1967) British politician

Remarks to Jack Straw at Prime Minister's Questions clarifying the government's position on the Iraq war after telling MPs the conflict had been "illegal" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10715629 (21 July 2010)
2010

“Howard Stern: Are you for the invasion of Iraq?”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2000s

“It is not just for the security of Iraq and the freedom of Iraq. It is for the security of the entire Middle East and for the freedom of the entire Middle East…. We are creating an environment that is threatening to the rest of the fundamentalist regimes in the area. This is an honorable goal on our part, but it is worrisome to the extreme. We do not know what they will do, nor what they have to do it with.”

Tom Tancredo (1945) American politician

http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=55399 (June 15, 2004).

“I opposed the war in Iraq because I did not believe it was in our national security interest, and I still don't. What we did was akin to taking a baseball bat to a beehive. Our primary security threat right now is terrorism ---and by doing what we did in Iraq, we've managed to alienate a good part of the world and most of the allies whose intelligence and other help we need to combat and defeat terrorism.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

Democratic Veteran http://www.usndemvet.com/blog/archives/000592.html, interview with Jo Fish 06/23/03

“The bottom line is this is not a war we want to get into. We can win the battle of Iraq, but that is not the war. It's not a war that can be won in the traditional sense. If we succeed in ousting Saddam Hussein, what then? Who is going to run Iraq afterwards? We cannot do it. The country is a mish mash of factions who hate each other.”

Jim Rogers (1942) American writer

War is Not a Good Idea (2002)

“Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people. But what we do know for sure is the terrorists are going to be at war with us a year, a year and a half from now.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

News conference (12 June 2007); as quoted in "Giuliani Sets Forth a Dozen Priorities for His Presidency" in The New York Times (13 June 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/us/politics/13giuliani.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq…. Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

August 1992, at the Discovery Institute in Seattle http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/192828_joel29.html
1990s

“Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq.”

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