In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors.

The United States prefers that Iraq meet its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative.

Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.

The Iraqis have become invested in their nationhood.

A large majority of Americans believe that the U.N., not the U.S., should take the lead in working with Iraqis to transfer authentic sovereignty as well as in economic reconstruction and maintaining civic order.

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

The U.S. is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis.

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.

I hope I’m wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn’t think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.

Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

When Britain and the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was with the reasonable expectation that it was going to increase the threat of terror, as it has.

Iraq is a long way from the U.S., but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Spaniards were condemned for appeasing terrorism by voting for withdrawing troops from Iraq in the absence of U.N. authorization – that is, for taking a stand rather like that of 70 percent of Americans, who called for the U.N. to take the leading role in Iraq.

The White House isn’t the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation.

When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism have reduced the pace of military transformation and have revealed our lack of preparation for defensive and stability operations. This Administration has overextended our military.

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism – mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets.

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

I don’t see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that’s almost inconceivable.

Qatar-based ‚Al-Jazeera,‘ the most important news channel in the Arab world, was harshly criticized by high U.S. officials for having ‚emphasized civilian casualties‘ during the destruction of Falluja. The problem of independent media was later resolved when the channel was kicked out of Iraq in preparation for free elections.

I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is gonna have to ultimately provide for its own security.

Senator McCain is Israel’s most unconditional ally in Mossad’s machinations, something that even his worst adversaries would have been able to imagine. McCain participated alongside this secret service in the creation of the Islamic State, which has appropriated a considerable part of Iraq as well as a third of Syria, according to its affirmations.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

There’s a lot of revisionist history that goes on these days about Iraq.

Our priority is to go after ISIL. And so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime. We are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven, in service of our strategy in Iraq.

Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama’s entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

Saddam’s goal is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.

The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell.

In September 1993, President Clinton presided over a handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn – the climax of a ‚day of awe,‘ as the press described it.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.

There’s nothing like white trash at the White House.

Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, we must not waver.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq’s Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq’s Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.