Bob Graham Quotations

In my judgment, the greatest risks are international terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah. The war in Iraq has taken our attention off those priorities.

A significant number of pages and sentences that the administration wants to keep in a classified status have already been released publicly, some of it by public statements of the leadership of the CIA and the FBI.

We need to make a greater investment in human intelligence.

I keep lists of names of people that I have met, a list of things to do day by day as well as a log of how my time is consumed throughout the day. It's a very important part of my personal discipline.

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.

I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth.

We need to make is to strengthen the position of the director of the CIA.

There are some legitimate security issues, but I believe many of the objections the administration is making are not for security reasons, but to disguise mistakes that were made prior to Sept. 11.

I have had national security background, 10 years on the Intelligence Committee, the last two years as chair.

The American people should be informed about what kind of capability terrorists have inside the United States. They should be informed of why we are not using information to do a more effective job of dealing with terrorists.

This president has been reluctant to hold anybody accountable. No one was held accountable after September the 11th. Nobody's been held accountable after the clear flaws in intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.

The American people do not have the information upon which they can hold the administration and responsible agencies accountable. I call that a coverup.

We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

I consider my voice to be a centrist moderate voice among the nine Democratic candidates.

I presumed the president was being truthful until a series of events undercut that confidence.

The American people have been denied important information for their own protection.

The president, clearly as a result of the war and the afterglow of the war, is in a time of great attention.

During the Cold War, we gathered information by listening to the Soviets, taking pictures of the Soviets, and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.

Gen. Tommy Franks told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq - a war more than a year away.

I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

It's fundamentally unfair to have so much of the tax relief go to so few. And it is a 10-year tax plan rather than one, as mine, focused on the next two years, which in my opinion is the critical time to jumpstart the economy.

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

The doctors have given me a green light. They have said that my heart is significantly more efficient today than it was four months ago. And I am anxious to be the next president of the United States.

We need to have a strong defense focused on areas that are in the greatest vulnerability. I have been very concerned about America's 361 seaports as a point in which terrorist activities and materials could be brought into the country.

With terrorist groups like al Qaeda, you can't learn what you want to learn about their capabilities and their future plans by taking a picture of it, and they've learned not to use the telephone.

I would extend the unemployment benefits. Many people have been weeks and weeks without being able to find a job no matter how hard they search.

I would give relief from the first $10,000 of the payroll tax. I would allow small businesses to accelerate depreciation so they would have an incentive to buy now rather than defer. I would also give to the states $40 billion of relief.

more than the federal government will spend on education this year, twice as much as the federal government will spend on our roads, bridges, highways and public transit systems.

Maybe his ascendancy will help represent a breakthrough on things

I have had a full and joyful and I hope productive life, and I intend to have other chapters that will meet those same standards,

When units come back they usually do an inventory of what gear they have and what is damaged or missing. When a unit comes in to check out, they need to have a missing or damaged gear statement stamped certified or true copied by their commanding officer. They have to have the statement done within ninety days of return. Instead of having the CO sign thirty missing or damaged gear statements, the unit only has to make one letter which the CO signs and attach the other Marines statements along with it.

(Maddox has) made the decision that unity is the key to our success,

I have made the judgment that I cannot be elected president, ... All of those things combined to make it difficult for us to have the time and to close the gap in organization and fund raising -- which have led to this difficult decision.

I am extremely pleased that the Chinese are releasing our servicemen. It was unfortunate that they didn't do this several days earlier.

The people who are responsible for taking action are the same people who wrote the intelligence information that was submitted to the president.

People might have disagreed with him, but they recognized that his views came from a deep and creative mind.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a rest-of-your-life decision, ... I have loved public service, and I have loved being in the United States Senate serving the people of Florida. The question is: is this what I wish to do for the rest of my life or are there other things I want to accomplish.

It is not always easy for a Cuban-American to be a vocal Democrat in Miami-Dade County,

It is not constructive to have two of your most important agencies perceived as having a fight, almost a children's playground fight, ... This is going to be a difficult, challenging period, and we all need to act like adults.

You know what my grandchildren call me? 'Doodle,' ... And when I'm really good, they call me 'Super Doodle.'

The premature conclusion of our presidential campaign was a great disappointment, ... However, it was not without its rewards. I am proud of the issues we raised, which are now becoming the central issues of debate in the presidential campaign.

When it's fully in place, it will make us stronger and more secure, ... There will inevitably be a time of learning who your new partners are, what the new rules and expectations are, and during that transition time, we may actually see some degree of lessened homeland security.

Yesterday in Palm Beach County, Florida, the 'oops' factor again reared its ugly head, casting doubt in the minds of many Floridians about whether or not their vote was actually counted,

We're not so much focusing on making a criminal case as we are trying to understand what our national security risks are and then how we can harden American and our vital interests around the world from future hits.

What I found most notable about President Bush's remarks was that he began to prepare the people for the potential long-term consequence of this action, including the possibility of a protracted military engagement, the hopefully limited collateral damage to Iraqi civilians, and the role that the United States will play after the hostilities cease,

To the best of my recollection, there is nothing inconsistent or contradictory in that testimony and what Mr. Clarke has said this week,

What the president is insisting upon are not new ideas, ... Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.

We have no intention to let this incident preclude us from continuing those flights.

There is no doubt that . Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.

The White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

Its fundamentally unfair to have so much of the tax relief go to so few. And it is a 10-year tax plan rather than one, as mine, focused on the next two years, which in my opinion is the critical time to jumpstart the economy.

We failed to see relationships that we should have. We failed to communicate from one agency to the other. Those are part of what we are learning today,

very effective in taking a question and then elaborating on issues that are largely irrelevant to the question in order to chew up the clock.

did not resolve the many contradictions between various accounts of what actions the Bush administration took in response to the threat of terrorism prior to 9/11.

The president is clearly making a judgment that it is more important for us to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan than it is to deal with the very serious problems that we have in the United States.

It wouldn't have taken a lot of luck. It would have taken someone who could have asked and gotten answers to the right follow-up questions and then put it together.

As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

We've just had a case in which some of our important national secrets have been stolen over a period of 15 years,

We should first give the Syrians and the Lebanese the opportunity to clean up their own house, ... That is a more serious threat to the United States in my judgment than Saddam Hussein.

Tom DeLay and the other leadership of the House of Representatives are not going to impeach George W. Bush, ... The good news is that in November of 2004, the American people will have a chance to both impeach and remove George W. Bush in one step.

The president of the United States can't be expected to be an intelligence analyst and a case officer,

Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional, or CBW (chemical and biological weapons) against the United States, ... Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions.

a serious question as to the credibility of the United States in the world and undercutting of confidence of the American people in the veracity of their government.

admiring of the diplomatic skills that President Bush has displayed throughout this incident. He was able to keep the matter contained, keep it within appropriate diplomatic channels and avoid this incident from becoming a major source of rupture of the US-China relationship.

The attacks of September 11th could have been prevented if the right combination of skill, cooperation, creativity and some good luck had been brought to the task.

That's an issue that Sen. Kerry will address at the appropriate time.

It's impossible to believe that Scooter Libby ... would have done this on his own determination, rather that this was part of a larger conspiracy to attempt to discredit Ambassador Wilson,

Inaction can no longer be our policy, ... To do so will ensure that Haiti is ruled by thugs and criminals.

If you think back to some of the Democratic governors who you are most proud of, people like LeRoy Collins, Reubin Askew and Lawton Chiles, Jim is in that mode, ... He is smart. He is a person with a great deal of inner strength and confidence.

By continuing to classify that information so that it's not available to the American people, the American people have been denied important information for their own protection, for the protection of the communities,

A plug-in vehicle with even a 20-mile range could reduce petroleum fuel consumption by about 60 percent.

An error on the part of poll workers pressing the wrong button to activate voting machines prevented many from voting in the Democratic primaries.

And that's what this bill is all about: assuring that each and every voter can have confidence in our elections and that when problems do arise, there can be a determination made about them -- what went wrong and how to correct it so that every vote is counted.

The clock is ticking. We don't have very much time to get these Americans back before American public opinion begins to turn very hostile toward China. I'm pleased that in the last 24 hours it seems there has been some diplomatic movement, but that movement can't be at slow speed. It's got to move quickly. I think we've got to get this thing resolved certainly by this weekend.

The herd instinct is as strong with multimillionaires as it is with any two- or four-legged animal.

These problems raise the fundamental issue of a citizen's confidence in the voting process,

It's not surprising that there is a statement that bin Laden is still alive. That's the best assessment of U.S. intelligence.

At least two people have been killed who were involved in this. And we don't know how many others have been compromised. It's important that we understand what happened so that we can be in position to work with the administration, with the intelligence community, to reduce the chances of it happening again,

Education needs to be a national priority, particularly getting class sizes down and hiring more teachers and helping with school construction, ... He's been emphasizing the importance of a patient's bill of rights for those people who get their health care from an HMO (health maintenance organization) and a prescription medication benefit. These are not ideas that just were sprung on in the last few days.

This president failed to tell the American people what he knew about the consequences of military victory in Iraq,

Combat operations haven't ended and President Bush's parsing of words does nothing but damage any confidence the American people have in their government's policy in Iraq,

I can't think of anyone who has been significantly sanctioned for their bad performance,

The men and women of America's armed forces and all citizens representing the U.N., and other nations must be reassured in times like these that they have our whole-hearted support and are in our prayers daily,