I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You know the most important thing the Americans did for Iraq apart from liberating the country from Saddam was helping Iraq reduce its debt. The United States worked very hard to reduce 80 percent of Iraqi debt.
Reasonable people can differ on whether or not we should have gone into Iraq.
Whatever one wants to say about the conduct of the Iraq War, going to war to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 was a necessary act. It should and could have been done earlier, had not the Clinton White House, which understood the need, not wasted the opportunity through timidity and bluster.
When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.
We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.
I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion.
Sooner or later something had to give. But President Bush, faced with the unprecedented affront of 9-11, could not wait to take action. So he had to do what we were capable of doing, and he did it brilliantly.
Iraq did nothing to us. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11.
I thought Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time and have been fighting to get the Administration to stop its failed policy and bring our troops home.
I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.