Saddam Quotations

Weapons of mass destruction are the greatest threat to life on earth. Biological weapons are often called the poor man's atomic bomb. Saddam Hussein is the ruler who has for decades been making the most determined and diabolical illegal effort to acquire them.

Throughout our courtship, Kenny told me that he had proof that Saddam Hussein was a threat because he possessed weapons of mass destruction. I told him, 'You had me at weapons.'

Colin Powell has said over the years that Saddam Hussein is like a toothache. It recurs from time to time, and you just have to live with it. At other times, he's compared Saddam Hussein to a kidney stone that will eventually pass. But he has never said, 'You have to operate and take out the kidney stone.'

Back when Saddam Hussein was in power, the Americans didn't care about his crimes. When he was gassing the Kurds and gassing Iran, they didn't care about it. When oil was at stake, somehow, suddenly, things mattered.

Saddam Hussein has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.

The purpose of the UN mechanism, this inspection mechanism, is not to engage in a cat and mouse game with Saddam Hussein and try to find weapons that the Iraqi government is working on concealing.

Someone once asked, 'What is the difference between me and Saddam Hussein?' The answer is, 'I have a conscience and he doesn't.'

My own view would be to let Saddam bluster, let him rant and rave all he wants. As long as he behaves himself within his own borders, we should not be addressing any attack or resources against him.

We made them drink poison last night and Saddam Hussein's soldiers and his great forces gave the Americans a lesson which will not be forgotten by history. Truly.

The first time I went to Iraq was October 2002, when Saddam was still in power, and then, subsequently, in January of 2003, about three-and-a-half months before the U.S. invasion. So, I got to see the before and after of Iraq, basically, before and after the war.

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.

When Karim and his group heard about Saddam coming, they wanted to kill him, but fate had other ideas.

Even before September 11, there was a debate in the administration about whether or not military force should be used to oust Saddam Hussein. You're not going to find one person in the top echelons of the foreign policy and national security establishment in the U.S. government who's going to say that Saddam Hussein should not be out of power.

It was, however, in the interest of Osama bin Laden for us to destroy a secular Arab leader; it was very much in the interest of the Iranians because they wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's invasion in 1980.

Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize Bush to take the nation to war. Most of them did so in the belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace.

All around the world one heard or read that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

As someone who has seen war first hand, and as a father of three young adults, it was my hope that we could have resolved this conflict and disarmed Saddam Hussein without war. However, this was not the case.

In searching for a rationale to go to war, Bush settled on the notion of Saddam as an incarnation of evil, basically, and convinced himself that Saddam was fundamentally Adolf Hitler reborn. I think his feelings towards Saddam were in fact quite genuine and quite legitimately hostile. He was not play acting.

It was known in the mid 90s already that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous tyrant that he had already launched aggressions against Iran, he had invaded Kuwait.

Let's be clear: Neither Secretary Powell or I opposed the notion of removing Saddam Hussein by force, but we wanted to avoid the war if we could. But if we couldn't, the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from the scene seemed eminently sensible, given that you had, what, 16 or so U.N. Security Council resolutions basically saying the same thing.

Once we destroyed the Saddam regime, we knew there was going to be a civil war.

Nostalgia for dead tyrants and the longing for heroes are unhealthy, and they can result in the deification of a Saddam as easily as a Havel or Mandela.

Iraqi national identity under Saddam Hussein never truly incorporated Shiites or Kurds. Sunnis, who identified most closely with the Iraqi nation, remain in some ways disenfranchised relative to the other groups, or at least they perceive themselves that way.

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.

In his final year in office, Clinton decided that his contribution to Middle East peace would lie not in the removal of Saddam Hussein but in a grand attempt to resolve the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. With this, he missed his last chance to deal forcefully with the man he was publicly committed to overthrowing.

The first weekend after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush had a meeting at Camp David with his top advisors, including Colin Powell, the secretary of state. And there was a lively debate about Iraq policy, in which some people from the Pentagon were arguing that the war against terrorism should include Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein was fascinated by ancient Babylon and Assyria. He made money available to protect and develop the great archaeological sites. The great achievements of Mesopotamian civilisation were pressed into the service of the Ba'athist regime.

So to recap: we may or may not be going to war with Iraq because Saddam may or may not have weapons of mass destruction, which he may or may not use, or pass to other terrorists groups with whom he may or may not have links.

I had first visited Kurdistan in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, camping out in Erbil and Sulaimaniya while waiting for Saddam Hussein's fall.

No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it's live. You know, it's like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney.

The president welcomes peaceful protests - it is a time-honored tradition. The president agrees violence is not the answer in Iraq, and that's why he hopes Saddam Hussein will disarm.

That was one of the great successes of removing Saddam Hussein, as we took Iraq out of the picture of having a sovereign nation from which the terrorists could operate. But this war has not gone perfectly.

I am told that the majority of Iraqis wanted Saddam removed from power, but they were unwilling and were incapable of doing the job themselves because they feared Saddam and knew the pain and torture he was capable of inflicting upon them.

Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor, with traditional goals for his aggression.

To avoid a military conflict, Saddam Hussein has no other choice than to leave the country.

There are many countries who have traditionally sponsored terrorism. Iraq is one, though it appears the majority of the terrorism committed by Saddam Hussein is on his own citizens. Iran in this regard. Syria, with their close support of Hezbollah, is noteworthy in this respect.

Unquestionably, the world is better off without Saddam.

As soon as, say, Saddam Hussein started bombing Israel with Scuds, everyone was like, 'Poor Israel.' But when Israel retaliates - and most of the time they then win - people turn against them.

Countries that need monies so that they can provide health care and education and shelter to their people shouldn't have to repay debts that we knowingly lent to bad regimes long since gone; and all illegitimate debts - debts lent to these terrible dictators like Saddam Hussein, like Suharto, like Marcos - must also be canceled.

If Saddam were to be replaced tomorrow he would probably be replaced with someone who's just as bad or worse than he is.

I just think everything we do has an unintended consequence. We take out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Iraq was the check against Iran.

Under Saddam Hussein, the nation of Iraq possessed and used chemical weapons against both their own Kurdish population and Iranian military forces.

Every Arab 'republic' has been a republic of fear, but only Saddam Hussein's Iraq surpassed the Assads' Syria in number of victims.

One thing is clear: These weapons must be must be dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must be dislodged from power,

Only, only, when Saddam Hussein does not comply with both the inspections and the consequences of the inspections ... then there can be reason for a military intervention,

Ninety-three percent said that removing weapons of mass destruction is not a reason for U.S. troops being there. Instead, that initial rationale went by the wayside and, in the minds of 68% of the troops, the real mission became to remove Saddam Hussein.

I would question what joy one can derive from being a strongman in a weak country, as Saddam Hussein is,

Life has taught me that if someone is being whipped and someone is whipping this person, I am always on the side of those who are being whipped. I've always criticized U.S. foreign policy for forgetting that the United States should defend those who need to be defended. I would object to U.S. policy if it supported Saddam Hussein, and I have always criticized the United States for supporting military regimes in Latin America.

Somebody at some level had to know he was there. Now obviously I can't tell you whether Saddam knew, but somebody in an official line of responsibility for customs and immigration knew he came into the country,

Neither the Iraqi people, nor other Arab governments nor indeed Islamic fundamentalists have any reason to admire or trust Saddam Hussein.

One by one, my sons were taken from me, ... Saddam took away my sons, he took away half of my heart.

One meeting does not make a conspiracy. Saddam Hussein does not engage in these types of acts.

politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein .

People who are willing to risk their lives need to know the truth, ... They need to understand that they are there based on decisions that were made in good faith, by responsible people, and that this world is going to be a lot better off with Saddam Hussein gone and with that country on a path toward democracy.

Perhaps we should make it into a school or a hospital. It symbolized the mentality of Saddam Hussein, and then it also became the symbol of everything that went wrong during the occupation.

Nuclear deterrence doesn't work outside of the Russian - U.S. context; Saddam Hussein showed that.

No political decision to eliminate Saddam Hussein has been taken and the judiciary is independent.

Leaders in the region remain engaged in the process of convincing President Saddam and the Iraqi leadership to disarm and cooperate with inspectors,

Milosevic had a dream of regaining his freedom by getting to Russia. Saddam thinks he can regain power through the insurgency.

Military intelligence interrogators, however, their goal is to get information, to save lives, to stop the war, to find Saddam - whatever the information is going to be used for, at whatever cost.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, independent news reporting has been offered to Iraqi citizens. This has led to further harassment.

Since the ousting and capture of Saddam Hussein by U.S. forces, civil rights and personal freedoms have been restored in Iraq, as well as equal rights to all, not just to Saddam's entourage of terrorists.

meets the U.N. inspection demands, okay. A diplomatic settlement is always preferable to a military air strike, even though Saddam Hussein has carried us to the brink of war, inflicted a lot of psychological damage and a lot of money costs. If the fine print measures up, we'll take a close look at it.

Most people by this time would be so wounded, they couldn't do anything with their lives. But his uncle filled Saddam with dreams of glory.

Seventy-seven senators from both sides of the aisle, the previous administration and foreign governments all believed, based on the same intelligence, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and posed an enormous threat,

I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns.

I have met Scott Ritter before and I think he's an idealist. I think he wants to believe that everybody's good and the world's going to be safe. But I don't believe there's any real credence to his statements. It looks to me like he's over there courting Saddam Hussein at the wrong time at the wrong place.

I would use this opportunity once again to urge President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership to take the wise decision of resuming cooperation with UNSCOM and the atomic agency,

I don't apologize for that, and I'm not sorry that Saddam Hussein is gone,

Given that kind of background, I would be a little bit surprised if it was Saddam Hussein who directed this, ... But, on the other hand, I would also be somewhat surprised if there were no connection at all between Saddam and al Qaeda.

I can't psychoanalyze why (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein does what he does, but I can tell you this. It's smart for him to stop attacking our planes because he was losing a lot of equipment. He was losing radars. He was losing missiles. And he was losing air defense guns. And he was losing command and control facilities. So, if he wants to hold on to his equipment, he should stop attacking the patrols.

France has aligned itself with Saddam -- there's no other way to look at this.

Frankly I'm not holding my breath for any confessional statement from Saddam Hussein,

I feel sorry for the Shiites. They have been deceived. They don't realize Saddam will be released again. Look at Saddam. He is an eagle,

I can accept that Saddam Hussein is a terrible dictator, but it is not the objective of the U.N. to get rid of him. The objective and the goal is to get rid of the weapons of mass destruction,

I don't think it makes sense for the United States to take on the whole world on the question of whether or not we're going after Saddam Hussein.

Given what we have seen, the active redeployment of (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's) air defenses, the high state of alert, we think he is interested in much more than diplomacy, that he has ulterior motives to moving these around and we need to be prepared.

I believe we could have removed Saddam Hussein from power without bombing the children of Baghdad.

I believe the president should have been given the authority he was given. I believe it's a very good thing that Saddam is gone. ... I think at the time it was the right thing to do to give the president that authority. I think if we'd have given John Kerry that authority we'd be in a very different place because he would have built a coalition to be successful.

But we couldn't hear anything for the first half-hour of the trial because the audio wasn't working. It was one of the most frustrating experiences of my journalistic life. Saddam is 10 feet away, and I can't hear a word he's saying. The people watching TV had a better view.

But that noose is tightening as well, as is the noose in regards to Saddam Hussein,

But that's going to be a little difficult because Saddam Hussein has a reputation for not putting anything in writing because he wanted to avoid this very thing.

I have a lot of different pins ... and it all kind of started as a joke, ... I do like jewelry, but when Saddam Hussein called me a snake, I happened to have a snake pin. And I was doing an interview, actually with CNN, and your cameras picked up that I had on a snake pin, and I was asked why and I said, 'because Saddam Hussein has just called me a snake.'

Had Britain so insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise.

We are finding new mass graves every day. Saddam Hussein committed a crime by using chemical weapons... He waged two wars on Iran and Kuwait. He murdered and executed hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis.

We take every effort to avoid civilian casualties, but (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein has to take a lot of the blame as long as he continues to violate the no-fly zones and attack our aircraft,

I absolutely think that Saddam has made up the allegations and used them to ambush the judge and distract from the testimony.

We must do everything, apply everything, apply every diplomatic, every political pressure so that the U.N. is successful that the inspectors are let into the country again and that we know exactly what weapons Saddam Hussein owns,

he was able to take important confessions from Saddam Hussein and he has signed these confessions and there is video and audio for these confessions.

I am familiar with the arguments against taking action in the case of Saddam Hussein, ... Some concede that Saddam is evil, power hungry and a menace, but that until he crosses the threshold of actually possessing nuclear weapons, we should rule out any preemptive action. That logic seems to me to be deeply flawed.

If we allow that to happen, then in essence we'll be doing the same thing we accused Saddam Hussein of doing. We'll just be substituting one tyranny for another.

He had that real Saddam attitude from the moment he stepped into that room, and he smiled at his codefendants, he smiled at the judge as he walked past,

The range of views now include a unified consensus that the failures are Iraq's, that the consequences are Iraq's and that the international community believes that Saddam Hussein is failing to comply with his required obligations.

He seems to believe if you are just against everything, that's enough -- against removing Saddam Hussein, against tax cuts, against knocking down walls of protection around the world so we can sell more products that are made in America by Americans.

I feel the pain that you are feeling, ... It is impossible to say that the plight of women was better under Saddam Hussein . Women were tortured, they had their children tortured in front of them.

What makes Saddam so much more a threat today than a month ago?

He'd like to see Saddam come clean and disarm, bring those weapons of mass destruction to a parking lot and allow them to be destroyed, ... He'd like to see a regime change in Iraq, so the Iraqi people can live in freedom and have more liberties -- and Saddam Hussein can still do that. The burden is on Saddam Hussein.

The people helping us have apparently been killed, ... Saddam is still in charge. We are trying to help somebody who doesn't want help, in order to hurt somebody we are not hurting, in order to save people who just got killed. I am not sure what the policy is about.

He never actually came out and said just that. But in every speech he gave during the campaign and afterwards, he left the impression. He left the impression with 65 percent of the American people, who agreed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. It was dishonest, what he did.

Look at Saddam, ... Saddam was a coward. Even his sons were more honorable than him. At least they fought and died.