What we said publicly is that we know that Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons, he's used them; we know about his biological weapons programs; and in the nuclear equation, left to his own devices, with no fissile material, by the end of the decade, he'll have a nuclear weapon. But if fissile material is provided to Saddam Hussein, he'll have a nuclear weapon within a year, so I'd say the year is the outside timetable.
The inspectors also found Iraq had developed effective means for dispersing these materials: unmanned aerial vehicles, spray devices, special munitions. We don't know where any of it is. And the last 60 days of new inspections have turned up no additional information that could allay any concerns about this military capability.
The CIA estimates that Iraq probably has a few hundred metric tons of chemical weapons agents, for mustard gas, sarin, and other deadly concoctions. This is addition to an extensive capacity to produce biological weapons, including anthrax and ricin, which is fatal within 24 to 36 hours of exposure.
Our President feels, and apparently many in the United Nations Security Council feel, that it is necessary to disarm Iraq before Iraq can again use weapons of mass destruction on her neighbors or she makes some liaison with terrorists who will use these weapons either against Iraq's neighbors or ourselves.
Well, first of all, I have to say that Iraq has already used weapons of mass destruction against her own people and against Iranians during their long war, so we know that weapons of mass destruction are existent with the Iraqis.
But finding these 16 warheads just raises a basic question: Where are the other 29,984? Because that is how many empty chemical warheads the U.N. Special Commission estimated he had - and he has never accounted for.
According to the United Nations Special Commission [UNSCOM], which carried out inspections in Iraq for the better part of a decade, Iraq possesses some 25,000 liters of anthrax. This is, for the record, more than 5 million teaspoons of anthrax. And we have no idea where any of it is. Saddam Hussein has never accounted for one grain of it.
Well, the United States has said that the disarmament of Iraq is the top priority, but we have also noted that there are many other United Nations Security Council Resolutions which are on the books, including the necessity to respect the human rights of all the citizens of Iraq that we're very interested in.
No one in this body wants to see terrorism and the rule of force prevail in Iraq. Some on the other side say otherwise, but I believe they know better.
, I'm going to reserve judgment on [Rex] Tillerson. But I'll ask him the same question I've asked the others: do you understand the historic lesson that the Iraq war was a failure, a strategic mistake, that's what Donald Trump says.
On the Gang of Eight bill, there was no provisions really for extra scrutiny or safety for refugees. At the time the bill came up, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Their fingerprints were on a bomb from Iraq. They were in the database, but we didn't pick them up.
My goodness, what we want in a leader is someone with judgment, not someone who is so reckless as to stand on the stage and say, "Yes, I'm jumping up and down; I'm going to shoot down Russian planes." Russia already flies in that airspace. It may not be something we're in love with the fact that they're there, but they were invited by Iraq and by Syria to fly in that airspace.
I would have voted 'no' on the Iraq war and 'yes' to Afghanistan.
Business of blurring is fantastic. They both are playing the politics of avoidance. They avoid all the issues on corporate power, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, so on and so forth. They avoid all those. That's the politics of avoidance. All the major issues that are so much on people's minds - health care, living wage, public works, jobs - they avoid.
I think indeed our response on counterinsurgency needs to be finely tuned to the needs of Afghanistan. This is not Iraq. We don't have a Sons of Iraq here. We don't have the same divisions here that we had between Sunni and Shia.
I saw the president make the tough calls in the Situation Room - and today, our troops in Iraq have finally come home so America can do some nation building here at home. That was the change that we believed in. That was the change we fought for. That was the change President Obama delivered.
I try to get over to Iraq and Afghanistan as much as I can.
I went out to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fundamentally [in Buzzing at the Sill] because I was interested in war as a notion and in experiencing it. I was interested in history and how societies form. I was interested in the recent history of what had provoked these wars. So when I finally got out there, I was really seeing the wars through the American perspective, much more than through being embedded with American soldiers and Marines.
I am still covering conflict to some degree. I was back in Iraq. I've covered quite a bit of the Israel and Palestine. But I'm not doing it with the kind of intensity I was before and I'm not seeking out the front line and the kind danger that comes with being at the edge of the war the way I used to.
Iran has proxies in Yemen, Syria, Iraq. You can push back against Iran without pulling out of the deal.
[ General James Mattis] is a Marine's Marine who has served in combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
As far as Iraq, the important thing is that the Taliban is gone in Afghanistan, three-quarters of the al-Qaida leadership is either dead or in jail, and we now have Saudi Arabia working with us, Pakistan working with us.
Second, the resolution contains the blatantly false assertion that negotiating a timeline for bringing U.S. troops home with the Iraqi government undermines U.S. national security. Such a statement shows a misunderstanding of the enemy we face in Iraq.
The U.S. cannot impose freedom, security, and unity in Iraq by force.
The choices Israelis face and the decisions they make, day in and day out, are literally the difference between life and death. In many ways, I liken their reactions to the way I felt while serving in Iraq.
