That’s what makes leadership so difficult and truly outstanding leaders so rare. Tough decisions involve weighing not just benefits and risks, but also competing principles and sometimes even conflicting rules.
Politics is human beings; it’s addition rather than subtraction.
A large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves looking for the bad folks.
We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.
What will follow will not be a repeat of any other conflict. It will be of a force and scope and scale that has been beyond what has been seen before.
Remember where you came from.
The Cold War was a war, and we won it.
If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.
Beware when any idea is promoted primarily because it is “bold, exciting, innovative, and new.” There are many ideas that are “bold, exciting, innovative and new,” but also foolish.
In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.
No terror state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don’t know the answer.
You might be a cunning linguist, but I am a master debater.
The implication that there was something wrong with the war plan is amusing.
America is not what’s wrong with the world.
Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qaeda.
I am not going to give you a number for it because it’s not my business to do intelligent work.
Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.
When there happens to be a weapon of mass destruction suspect site in an area that we occupy and if people have time, they’ll look at it.
We never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Then there are three or four countries that have said they won’t do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won’t help in any respect.