Iraq

Iraq is a country on the continent of Eurasia and in the Middle East. Previously part of the Ottoman Empire, it became a separate entity under British supervision following World War I and gained formal sovereignty in 1932 under a Hashemite monarchy. A nationalist republican movement overthrew the monarchy in 1958 and was in turn overthrown in 2003 by the American invasion, which oversaw the creation of the present federal republic. Its current head of state is President Abdul Latif Rashid, and its current head of government is Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani.

A

 * Iraq is getting stronger, getting unified. I think others, or the interference of others in the affairs of Iraq, will become less and less. This is a new-built confidence among Iraqis, the Iraqi national feeling, which our aim is to increase people’s attachment to their own country.
 * Haider al-Abadi, interview with Tamer El-Ghobashy


 * I hope others in the [Middle Eastern] region will see a lot of hope and positive tendencies in our [Iraqi] democracy... We [Iraqis] have decided that we’ll accept that we are different. We are very eager to keep and protect our diversity. We want to undo whatever the terrorists have done.
 * Haider al-Abadi, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal


 * Iraq is one country. If you revert to dictatorship in one part, people might copy that in another part of the country. This is very dangerous for us... We have suffered a lot under dictatorship. We should never allow dictatorship to come back.
 * Haider al-Abadi, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal


 * I want to prove that the Iraqi woman has her own existence in society, she has her rights like men. I am afraid of nothing, because I am confident that what I am doing is not wrong.
 * Shaima Qassem Abdulrahman, as quoted in NBC News (December 2015).


 * We came to power on a CIA train.
 * Ba'ath Party official Ali Saleh Sa'adi, quoted in Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (2000), by Said K. Aburish.


 * If it is Syria’s shelter for the Iraqi resistance to the east that has made it the target for an American siege, it is with good reason. For in Iraq itself, the war has gone from bad to worse for Washington. Confronted with a dauntless insurgency, the Occupation is still—after three years and an outlay of over $200 billion—unable to assure regular supplies of water and electricity to the people it has subjugated. Factories remain idle. Hospitals and schools barely function. Oil revenues have been looted wholesale by America’s local minions, not to speak of a horde of U.S. contractors on the take. Wretched as living conditions were for the majority of the population under U.N. sanctions, under the Americans they have deteriorated yet further, as sectarian killings multiply and minimal security disappears.
 * Tariq Ali, Mid-Point in the Middle-East? New Left Review 38, March/April 2006.


 * Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction.
 * Martti Ahtisaari, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (11 October 2008).


 * Hey Iranians! No one has been downtrodden in the country where Ali ibn Abi Ṭālib, Husayn ibn Ali and Abbas ibn Ali are buried. Iraq has undoubtedly been honorable country. All refugee should be precious. Everybody who wants to live in exile can choose Iraq freely. We Iraq's sons have been ambushing to foreign aggressors. The enemies who plan to assault to Iraq are going to be disfavored with God in this world and eternity universe. Be careful to think to attack to Iraq and Ali ibn Abi Ṭālib! If you surrender Perhaps you will be in peace.
 * An Iraqi notice for Propaganda against Iranian forces.

B

 * March 19 (2018) marks 15 years since the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the American people have no idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed. The U.S. military has refused to keep a tally of Iraqi deaths. General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the initial invasion, bluntly told reporters, “We don’t do body counts.” One survey found that most Americans thought Iraqi deaths were in the tens of thousands. But our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion.The number of Iraqi casualties is not just a historical dispute, because the killing is still going on today. Since several major cities in Iraq and Syria fell to Islamic State in 2014, the U.S. has led the heaviest bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam, dropping 105,000 bombs and missiles and reducing most of Mosul and other contested Iraqi and Syrian cities to rubble.
 * The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq, by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies / AlterNet (15 March 2018)
 * I accept fully that those opposed to this course of action share my detestation of Saddam. Who could not? Iraq is a wealthy country that in 1978, the year before Saddam seized power, was richer than Portugal or Malaysia. Today it is impoverished, sixty per cent of its population dependent on food aid. Thousands of children die needlessly every year from lack of food and medicine. Four million people out of a population of just over twenty million are in exile. The brutality of the repression – the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty are well documented. Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, his tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death, as a warning to others. I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam. ‘But you don’t,’ she replied. ‘You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear.’ And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place and that is how they will continue to be forced to live.
 * Tony Blair, 18 March 2003 speech


 * Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
 * George W. Bush, 2002 State of the Union Address (29 January 2002).


 * Iraq's talented people, rich culture, and tremendous potential have been hijacked by Saddam Hussein. His brutal regime has reduced a country with a long and proud history to an international pariah that oppresses its citizens, started two wars of aggression against its neighbors, and still poses a grave threat to the security of its region and the world.
 * George W. Bush, A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi people (6 March 2003), Speech in Atlantic Summit in Azores, Portugal.


 * We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.
 * George W. Bush, invasion of Iraq speech (19 March 2003).


 * The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.
 * George W. Bush, speech at the National Endowment for Democracy (6 November 2003)


 * The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people; and it is unacceptable to me.
 * George W. Bush, address to the Nation (10 January 2007)


 * Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post–Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome.
 * George H. W. Bush, A World Transformed (1998)

C

 * Iraq — the country identified in American minds with chaos and endless warfare — is a democracy. Citizens vote, and leaders must respond to their demands; otherwise, they won’t be reelected. It’s a deeply flawed democracy, to be sure, as Salih is the first to note. Yet its institutions, created after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, have endured. Iraqis routinely take to the streets to demonstrate. The country’s top religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who acts as an unofficial political arbiter, has persistently supported democratic institutions, as well as serving as a locus of Iraqi nationalism... We can let Iraq succumb entirely to Iranian influence — or we can reengage with the country, showing Iraqis that we stand with them and take their democratic aspirations seriously. There is an opportunity here that we shouldn’t miss.
 * Christian Caryl, "Iraq’s president explains why the U.S. must reengage with Baghdad" (20 March 2019), The Washington Post


 * We have not witnessed the reduction in violence one would have hoped for in a perfect world.
 * Major General William Caldwell, on the situation in Iraq since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (20 July 2006).


 * We know from long experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to take territory, hold territory, and govern territory and prevent a reemergence of a terrorist group... The bane of Iraq has been sectarianism... There are three components to Iraq... We vastly prefer a multi-sectarian Iraqi state to any form of disintegration because we know where that leads... But, for that to work in Iraq? The Sunnis have to be represented, and they have to be part of the fight to take back their own territory. So, we are working with them a lot.
 * Ashton Carter, interview with Charlie Rose (February 2016)






 * Before there were any suicide bombers, it was also reported by the same sources that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to the families of anyone who was killed by Israeli atrocities, and there were plenty of them. Well, should he've been doing that? So let's take the first month of the current intifada. I'm just relying now on IDF sources. What they say is, that in the first few days of the intifada, the Israeli army fired a million bullets. One of the high military officers said 'that means one bullet for every child'. Within the first month of the intifada, they killed about 70 people. Using U.S. helicopters, and in fact Clinton shipped new helicopters to Israel as soon as they started using them against civilians. That's just the first month. And it goes on, no suicide bombers. At the time, it was reported that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to every family. Well, is that supporting terror? It seems to me, sending helicopters to Israel when they're using them to attack apartment complexes, that's supporting terror.
 * Noam Chomsky, "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002


 * I've been through the Pentagon, right after 9/11. About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military, and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.” So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the secretary of defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” and I saw him a year or so ago and I said: "Remember that?" he said: "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to ya!"
 * Wesley Clark, Democracy Now — Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: “I Think About It Every Day”, (2 March 2007)

D

 * Iraq has at least more political pluralism and civic space than most of its Arab neighbors, and that is something to appreciate and try to further support and nurture.
 * Larry Diamond, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal


 * British and US forces fired about 320 tonnes of depleted uranium munitions in the 1991 Gulf war and may have used up to 2000 tonnes in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Because of its extreme density it is used to make the tips of armour piercing shells. Reports from southern Iraq have documented a steep rise in the incidence of cancers since the 1990s, especially cases in children.
 * Owen Dyer, “WHO suppressed evidence on effects of depleted uranium, expert says”, BMJ. 2006 Nov 11; 333(7576): 990.

F

 * The country faces big challenges and we can address these challenges together with parties from different backgrounds and ideologies who share the concerns and interest as the people of Iraq.
 * Raid Jahid Fahmi, as quoted in Communist leader: Iraqis to decide who controls Iraq, nobody else (25 May 2018), .


 * Our interest must not risk Iraq's interests. If we can build an Iraq on the basis of our own independence and sovereignty, I think this Iraq will be respected by others, whether it be the Americans, Iranians or any other country.
 * Raid Jahid Fahmi, as quoted in Communist leader: Iraqis to decide who controls Iraq, nobody else (25 May 2018), .


 * Iraqis will decide who controls Iraq - no one from outside.
 * Raid Jahid Fahmi, as quoted in Communist leader: Iraqis to decide who controls Iraq, nobody else (25 May 2018), .


 * Iraq will have a formally independent government that will be in perpetual gridlock and chaos.
 * George Friedman, interview with Matt Bai (2003), The New York Times

G

 * The inability of the United States to comprehend what it was becoming involved in when... it declared a Global War on Terror, has to be reckoned one of the singular failures of national security policy over the past twenty years. Not only did the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq make bad situations worse, but the fact that no one is Washington was able to define “victory” and think in terms of an exit strategy has meant that the wars and instability are still with us....The Iraqi Parliament has, in fact, asked U.S. forces to leave the country, a request that has been ignored both by Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Trump actually threatened to freeze Iraqi bank assets to pressure the Iraqis into accepting the continued U.S. occupation. At the same time, American troops illegally present in neighboring Syria, continue to occupy that country’s oil fields to deprive the government in Damascus of much needed resources. Neither Iraq nor Syria threatens the United States in any way.
 * Philip Giraldi in Whither Afghanistan? Getting Out Is Harder Than Getting In, Philip Giraldi, Strategic Culture, (July 22, 2021)

H

 * The future of Iraq after Saddam Hussein is also an open question. Some of my colleagues and some American analysts now speak authoritatively of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds in Iraq, and how Iraq can be a test case for democracy in the Arab world. How many of us really know and understand much about Iraq, the country, the history, the people, the role in the Arab world? I approach the issue of post-Saddam Iraq and the future of democracy and stability in the Middle East with more caution, realism, and a bit more humility. While the people of the Arab world need no education from America about Saddam's record of deceit, aggression, and brutality, and while many of them may respect and desire the freedoms the American model offers, imposing democracy through force in Iraq is a roll of the dice. A democratic effort cannot be maintained without building durable Iraqi political institutions and developing a regional and international commitment to Iraq's reconstruction. No small task.
 * Chuck Hagel (2002), Stathis, S. W., 2009. Landmark Debates in Congress: From the Declaration of Independence to the War in Iraq. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
 * Actually, who is the terrorist, who is against human rights? The answer is the United States because they attacked Iraq. Moreover, it is the terrorist king, waging war.
 * Hamzah Haz, "Indonesian VP: United States Is 'Terrorist King'" (2003), Common Dreams.


 * We hope that war will not take place, but if war is forced upon us then Iraq will continue to be here and this country with history of over 8000 years, this country, the cradle of the first civilization of humanity will not finish just like that even though a huge power may want to be like that. Nobody! Nobody should accept that Iraq should finish in such a way!
 * Saddam Hussein, Interview with Dan Rather (2003)
 * Iraq is a great nation now, as it has been at times throughout history. Nations generally "go to the top" only once. Iraq, however, has been there many times, before and after Islam. Iraq is the only nation like this in the world. This "gift" was given to the Iraqi people by God. When Iraqi people fall, they rise again.
 * Saddam Hussein in an interview with FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279.

J

 * Iraq’s democratic and more importantly constitutional structures that were put in place as a result of 2003 and U.S. direct involvement have weathered 12 years, ISIS seizing one-third of the country, a simultaneous drop by 50% of its main economic driver oil, and conflict with Kurdistan.
 * James Jeffrey, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal

K

 * The tension between these conflicting aims is perhaps particularly acute in the late twentieth century because of the publicity given to the existence of various alternative “models” for emulation. On the one hand, there are the extremely successful “trading states”—chiefly in Asia, like Japan and Hong Kong, but also including Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria—which have taken advantage of the great growth in world production and in commercial interdependence since 1945, and whose external policy emphasizes peaceful, trading relations with other societies. In consequence, they have all sought to keep defense spending as low as is compatible with the preservation of national sovereignty, thereby freeing resources for high domestic consumption and capital investment. On the other hand, there are the various “militarized” economies—Vietnam in Southeast Asia, Iran and Iraq as they engage in their lengthy war, Israel and its jealous neighbors in the Near East, and the USSR itself—all of which allocate more (in some cases, much more) than 10 percent of their GNP to defense expenditures each year and, while firmly believing that such levels of spending are necessary to guarantee military security, manifestly suffer from that diversion of resources from productive, peaceful ends. Between the two poles of the merchant and the warrior states, so to speak, there lie most of the rest of the nations of this planet, not convinced that the world is a safe enough place to allow them to reduce arms expenditure to Japan’s unusually low level, but also generally uneasy at the high economic and social costs of large-scale spending upon armaments, and aware that there is a certain trade-off between short-term military security and long-term economic security.
 * Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (1987)


 * We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
 * John Kerry Speech at New York University (21 September 2004)


 * If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.
 * Henry Kissinger, Commenting on the Iraq War in a BBC interview of 19 November 2006, as quoted in "Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible" by Tariq Panja, Associated Press, at Yahoo! News (20 November 2006)


 * The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.
 * As quoted in


 * We should continue to support the Iraqi people's efforts to rebuild their country
 * Junichirō Koizumi, as quoted in "Beheaded Japanese to be flown home" (31 October 2004), CNN.

L

 * As we act, let us not become the evil we deplore.
 * Congresswoman Barbara Lee a speech to the House of Representatives (14 September 2001)

M

 * We pray to God almighty to give us strength so we can meet the ambitious goals of our people, who have suffered a lot.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as quoted in.


 * Do not imagine that this problem is solely an Iraqi problem because the terrorist front represents a threat to all free countries and free people of the world. [...] Thousands of lives were tragically lost on Sept. 11 when these impostors of Islam reared their ugly head. Thousands more continue to die in Iraq today at the hands of the same terrorists who show complete disregard for human life.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking before the U.S. Congress (26 July 2006).


 * Al-Qaeda is still the biggest threat for Iraq and the region.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Only 'one in five Iraqis' has confidence in coalition (March 2007).


 * Despite what we are suffering through, we haven't heard from our political partners with any support. They are not partners in facing the crisis, but they are partners in spending the wealth of Iraq.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, on Iraq's other political parties.
 * As quoted in Sunni Militants Advance Toward Large Iraqi Dam, (June 2014)


 * Few talk or think about Iraq these days; the media ignores this important but demolished nation. Iraq, let us recall, was the target of a major western aggression concocted by George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Britain’s Tony Blair, and financed and encouraged by the Gulf oil sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia... Most people don’t understand that Iraq remains a US-occupied nation. We hear nothing about the billions of dollars of Iraqi oil being extracted by big US oil firms since 2003. For the United States, Iraq was a treasure house of oil with 12 per cent of the world reserves. It was OPEC’s second largest producer.
 * Eric Margolis in The forgotten plunder of Iraq, CommonDreams (November 17, 2019)


 * The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons, mainly because they have used them in the past. Well, if that's the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S. has stockpiled these same weapons and more for over forty years.
 * Timothy McVeigh, "An Essay on Hypocrisy" (1998), Media Bypass.
 * Saddam set about transforming Iraq into what one dissident labelled the ‘Republic of Fear’. His notorious secret police, the Mukhabarat, together with the state internal security department (the Amn), established a fierce grip over the entire country. Regular massacres were carried out of Jews, Freemasons, communists, economic saboteurs or merely people who crossed Saddam or his greedy, pitiless family, all of whom served in his government. Purge followed upon purge, attended by show trials and televised confessions. Over the subsequent two decades Saddam Hussein killed at least 400,000 Iraqis — many of whom endured all manner of torture. His psychopathic sons, particularly the sadistic, demented heir apparent Uday, conducted their own struggles for power and brutal reigns of terror, personally torturing their enemies. At one point, Saddam's two sons-in-law, fearing murder by Uday, fled to Jordan but were tricked into returning and then slaughtered by Uday.
 * Simon Sebag Montefiore, Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women (2009), p. 5

N

 * Iran was in war with Iraq for 8 years, and Ayatollah Khomeini tried to topple Saddam, but he failed. Then, a few years later, in 2003, the U.S. entered Iraq and got rid of Saddam, but it got tangled in a never-ending conflict that turned Iraq into rubble and killed thousands of innocent Iraqis. Who is the winner of this terrible war? In my humble opinion, it is the Iranian regime, because with Saddam gone, they have tried to encourage an Islamic Republic in Iraq, which is the only other country with a majority Shia population in the region, and if this becomes reality, it could turn Iran into a huge power in the region. Actually, the U.S. invasion of Iraq greatly damaged the opposition in Iran, as now anyone who criticizes the Iranian regime is accused of asking for a U.S. invasion of Iran and working for the CIA. So one of the undisputable side effects of this war has been the strengthening of the government of Iran.
 * Marina Nemat, Democracy in Iran?.


 * "It's the cradle of civilization," says McGuire Gibson, who teaches Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Chicago. "It's the place where we get the first cities, the first writing, the first thoughts about what's man's relationship to God. It's the first sort of ideas about death. It's the first recorded literature that we have." Gibson and other archaeologists are quick to say their first concern if war comes to Iraq is the loss of human life. But with nearly 100,000 archaeological sites at stake, they're also concerned about the loss of human history, DeRose reports. Gibson says the 1991 Gulf War literally chipped away at a priceless past. One example is the massive 4,000-year-old Ziggurat at Ur, in southern Iraq. The temple pyramid was hit by at least 400 shells that took out "big chunks" from the structure, Gibson says.
 * NPR Morning Edition, “Protecting Ancient History in Iraq”,(February 20, 2003).

O

 * There's something that I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 911 while Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are setting up basecamps in safe haven to train terrorists to attack us? That was Senator McCain judgement, it's wrong judgement, when Senator McCain was cheerleading the president to going into Iraq, he suggested 'it is going to be quick and easy, we'll be great liberator' and that's the wrong judgement and it's been costly to us.
 * Barack Obama, US Presidential Debate (2008)

P

 * Rarely do we hear that Iraq has never committed any aggression against the United States. No one in the media questions our aggression against Iraq for the past 12 years by continuous bombing and imposed sanctions responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. [...] Only tyrants can take a nation to war without the consent of the people. The planned war against Iraq without a Declaration of War is illegal. It is unwise because of many unforeseen consequences that are likely to result. It is immoral and unjust, because it has nothing to do with US security and because Iraq has not initiated aggression against us. We must understand that the American people become less secure when we risk a major conflict driven by commercial interests and not constitutionally authorized by Congress. Victory under these circumstances is always elusive, and unintended consequences are inevitable
 * Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul Before We Bomb Iraq] (February 26, 2002).


 * War and its repercussions for archaeology in Western Asia have been practically omnipresent for the last 25 years; Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the pilfering of objects in the Kuwait Museum, followed by the damage to and looting of Iraqi sites in the wake of the US-led ground invasion and post invasion the dynamiting of the Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, by the Taliban in spring 2001 and the smashing of anthropomorphic imagery in the Kabul Museum; the damage during the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, most infamously in the Iraq Museum but also the ensuing looting of sites; the highly mediatized destructions of monuments and sites in Syria and northern Iraq by Islamic State since 2014 as well as the longer involvement of warring parties in looting and sales of antiquities; the damage to the Old City of Sanaa in Yemen as a result of Saudi bombing; and the ongoing conflicts in the West Bank and Gaza that have resulted in the neglect of sites.
 * Susan Pollock, “Archaeology and Contemporary Warfare”, Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2016. 45:215–31, p.216


 * I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same.
 * George Bush on his talks with Vladimir Putin (15 July 2006)
 * We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly.
 * Response by Vladimir Putin (15 July 2006).


 * Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.
 * Michael Prysner, "Our real enemies," December 21, 2011

R

 * George Herbert Walker Bush invented regime change in Iraq and Bill Clinton inherited it, and ran with it. The CIA made four concerted efforts to assassinate Saddam Hussein under Clinton's leadership. So it's not like this was a passive program; it was an active program... And I really am tired of all the Clinton Democrats running around getting all-sanctimonious over Iraq. It was them who killed 1.5 to 2.2 million Iraqis through sanctions. Sanctions that Madeline Albright, their illustrious Secretary of State, when confronted with the fact of 500,000 dead Iraqi children, said it was a price she was willing to pay.
 * Scott Ritter Says Controversial Things About Clinton, Bush, Fox News, the Surge, etc., Interview with the Memphis Flyer, (8 May 2008)


 * If this was all about Israel dictating policy, we'd have skipped Iraq and gone straight to Iran. But this is not, and it never has been about Israel, or Iran, or Iraq. It's about America imposing its will on areas of the would that we believe to be in our national security interests. The big picture in the Middle East isn't Iran or Iraq. The big picture in the Middle East is China. People don't understand that. They don't know what’s going on right now. It's about leveraging control over Middle-Eastern and central-Asian oil, in order to dictate the pace of China's economic growth over the next 30 years.
 * Scott Ritter Says Controversial Things About Clinton, Bush, Fox News, the Surge, etc., Interview with the Memphis Flyer, (8 May 2008)


 * I wouldn't presume to present a plan different from that of the President. But I believe he was right to take on the war on terror on an aggressive front rather than a defensive front. We toppled the government ... walking away would mean a humanitarian disaster. We're there and we have a responsibility to finish the job.
 * Mitt Romney, response to Bill O'Reilly (27 September 2006)


 * Oh, I don't know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different. If you think of civil wars in other countries, this is really quite different. There is -- there is a good deal of violence in Baghdad and two or three other provinces, and yet in 14 other provinces there's very little violence or numbers of incidents. So it's a -- it's a highly concentrated thing. It clearly is being stimulated by people who would like to have what could be characterized as a civil war and win it, but I'm not going to be the one to decide if, when or at all.
 * Donald Rumsfeld in response to the question "Is the country closer to civil war?", Pentagon press conference (25 July 2006)].

S

 * Is the Iraqi state succeeding? I think there are some prospects for this country to be moving in the right direction. But the legacies of the past, the problems are really, really monumental... We need to deliver. Otherwise we will not be able to justify what we do in the eyes of our public. And public opinion does matter in Iraq. People speak their minds. People are engaged, are interested... Life is coming back... Every time I go out of the presidential palace in Baghdad — and I do try to go out as often as I can — I do see normalcy coming back, more and more. I do think there is a window of opportunity — it should be cherished. We’ve not had it like this for a long, long time... It’s precious, but precarious.
 * Barham Salih, as quoted in "Iraq’s president explains why the U.S. must reengage with Baghdad" (20 March 2019), by Christian Caryl, The Washington Post


 * The invasion of Iraq has resulted in the almost complete annihilation of that country’s Christian community, and the attempt to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria has seen that country’s Christians mercilessly attacked by the agents of US power, radical Islamists. To be a Christian in the Middle East is to be in constant fear that the USA will set its sights on your country because wherever it arrives, Mujahideen are never that far away.
 * Niccolo Soldo, Saturday Commentary and Review #63, Substack, 29 November 2021

T

 * Iraq’s prospects are looking brighter. A resurgent central government has defeated Islamic State, thanks in part to renewed American military involvement, and has taken back lands lost to the country’s Kurdistan autonomous region since 2003. And Iraq’s improbable political experiment has endured. In an increasingly repressive and authoritarian part of the world, this nation of 40 million people stands apart as a rare—though still deeply flawed—democracy. Iraq’s elected leaders insist that, despite their country’s many travails, it still has something to teach the rest of the Middle East.
 * Yaroslav Trofimov, "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), The Wall Street Journal


 * It's the Harvard of Terrorists.
 * Donald Trump, interview with Charlie Rose (17 February 2016).

W

 * WHAT is Iraq, anyhow? Well, it's a lot of things, old and new. It is one of the oldest countries in the world–and one of the youngest under its present government.
 * War and Navy Departments, A Short Guide to Iraq (1942), Washington, D.C., p. 3


 * Baghdah’s control of Iraq’s provinces is, in part, based on its custodianship of the country’s petrodollars, with the oil sector contributing up to 99 percent of government revenue. The war against ISIS, however, forced the government to divert huge sums of money to the army, as well as to the salaries of 110,000 fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces in November, in a bid to rein in Shia paramilitary groups. This siphoned much-needed revenue from the provinces.
 * Jack Watling, “Why Iraq Needs the Oil”, The Atlantic, (Jan 25, 2017).

Z

 * The problem, again, was that there were too many reasons for the war. What conferred a semblance of consistency on this multitude of reasons was, of course, ideology.
 * Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 2. ISBN 1844675408


 * What then, was the real reason for going to war? Strangely, there were, in effect, three: (1) a sincere ideological belief that the USA was bringing democracy and prosperity to another nation; (2) the urge brutally to assert and demonstrate unconditional US hegemony; (3) control of Iraq's oil reserves. Each of the three levels has a relative autonomy of its own, and should not be dismissed as a mere deceptive semblance.
 * Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 4. ISBN 1844675408


 * In autumn 2003, when, after hundreds of investigators had searched high and low for WMDs, yet not a single one had been located, the public were posing the elementary question: 'If there are no WMDs, Why did we attack Iraq? Did you lie to us?'
 * Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 12. ISBN 1844675408


 * The reason why the U.S. Government must be prosecuted for its war-crimes against Iraq is that they are so horrific and there are so many of them, and international law crumbles until they become prosecuted and severely punished for what they did. We therefore now have internationally a lawless world (or “World Order”) in which “Might makes right,” and in which there is really no effective international law, at all. This is merely gangster “law,” ruling on an international level... The seriousness of this international war crime is not as severe as those of the Nazis were, but nonetheless is comparable to it... On 15 March 2018, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies headlined at Alternet,  “The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq” and wrote that “our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion,” and linked to solid evidence, backing up their estimate.... On 6 February 2020, BusinessInsider bannered “US taxpayers have reportedly paid an average of $8,000 each and over $2 trillion total for the Iraq war alone”, and linked to the academic analysis that supported this estimate. The U.S. regime’s invasive war, which the Bush gang perpetrated against Iraq, was also a crime against the American people (though Iraqis suffered far more from it than we did).
 * Eric Zuesse, Why U.S. Must Be Prosecuted for Its War Crimes Against Iraq, American Herald Tribune, (16 May 2020)


 * Bush’s successors have become accessories after the fact, by this failure to press for prosecution of him and his henchmen regarding this grave matter. In fact, the “Defense One” site bannered on 26 September 2018, “US Official: We May Cut Support for Iraq If New Government Seats Pro-Iran Politicians”, and opened with “The Trump administration may decrease U.S. military support or other assistance to Iraq if its new government puts Iranian-aligned politicians in any ‘significant positions of responsibility,’ a senior administration official told reporters late last week.” The way that the U.S. regime has brought ‘democracy’ to Iraq is by threatening to withdraw its protection of the stooge-rulers that it had helped to place into power there, unless those stooges do the U.S. dictators’ bidding, against Iraq’s neighbor Iran. This specific American dictator, Trump, is demanding that majority-Shiite Iraq be run by stooges who favor, instead, America’s fundamentalist-Sunni allies, such as the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia and who hate and loathe Shiites and Iran. The U.S. dictatorship insists that Iraq, which the U.S. conquered, serve America’s anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian policy-objectives.
 * Eric Zuesse, Why U.S. Must Be Prosecuted for Its War Crimes Against Iraq, American Herald Tribune, (16 May 2020)


 * I do not want to criticize while my soldiers are still bleeding and dying in Iraq.
 * General Eric K. Shinseki to associates; quoted in

In fiction

 * Flagee: You see, Ribbon. We have to stop Iraq because they might develop weapons of mass destruction!
 * Ribbon: Gee whillikers. Flagee, I’m confused!
 * Ribbon: The Reagan/Bush administration helped Hussein plan and execute chemical weapon attacks against Iran in the '80s!
 * Flagee: Where did you read that leftist conspiracy madness, Ribbon?
 * Ribbon: The New York Times.
 * Flagee: Well, from now on, only Fox News for you!!
 * Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks, (9/25/2002).