Paul Bremer Quotes (37 Quotes)

The IG auditors presume that the coalition could achieve a standard of budgetary transparency and execution that even peaceful Western nations would have trouble meeting within a year, especially in the midst of a war,

They might have lost track. They can be trying to disrupt an operation. They could have a number of purposes at once.

The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.

I think there really is no shortcut to sovereignty.

It is certainly not unrealistic to think we could have elections by mid-year 2004 and when a sovereign government is installed - my job here will be done.

If the provisional government asks us to leave, we will leave,

the terrorists are willing to kill as many people as they can, indiscriminately, and they seem to have killed quite a number of schoolchildren today in addition to policemen.

We've thrown out Saddam and Saddam, dead or alive, is finished in Iraq.

send in people who are effectively guerrillas and have them get in the country and try to set up social services and decide that these social services are their ticket to popularity.

I think we Americans, of all people, understand the importance of a good, legal, constitutional framework as the basis of political life.

My sense is there's a lot of momentum behind this desire for democracy here, ... We've had town hall meetings, selection of provincial councils ... all over this country. There's a real thirst for democracy.

We need experienced Iraqi commanders who can lead troops. Listen, I've always told you that I opposed disbanding the army.

Well, you have to remember that, at least until Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism was not the sole organizing principle of American foreign policy.

Saddam spent 35 years stealing and wasting money, and all of these systems are very fragile and brittle, and you try to fix one thing and something else gets in trouble.

He is virulently anti-Western and is particularly anti-American, ... and he has the resources to fund considerable anti-American or anti-Western activity. So he is a concern, because he's got a clear motive and he's got the means to carry out -- or to pay people to carry out -- attacks.

I leave Iraq gladdened by what has been accomplished and confident your future is full of hope.

Iraq has become, for better or for worse, the front on the war on terrorism, and so we've got to do this, and I can understand why congressmen and senators would take their responsibility seriously, but I think in the end we'll get the money.

When the new wave of terrorism came on the modern world, which is the late 1960s, early 1970s, I think we spent about a decade, the United States and our allies, trying to figure out how to deal with it.

I think what we've learned is that the terrorist threat is serious, but it shifts. You cannot make a single person the sole focus of your counterterrorism.

the tragic waste and abuse of billions of dollars that belonged to the Iraqi people.

These people hate the United States, not for what we do, but for who we are and what we are.

We try very quickly to show that we are not at war with the Iraqi people. We're trying to deal with the people who are indeed themselves at war with the Iraqi people.

If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

And hold it should. In the November 15th agreement, the Governing Council and coalition promised the Iraqi people sovereignty on a date certain and we will give it to them.

It's a division that we keep for bureaucratic reasons, but it's not one that terrorists keep, ... And it's clear that you need to have a more seamless interaction of the intelligence that is collected, however it is collected under whatever guidelines there are.

I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here.

the question is how do we select a transitional government by the end of June.

The people who are attacking the coalition and who are trying to upset the security here are of course in the first instance attacking us. But in the end, they're really attacking the Iraqis, because they're really trying to undermine security, ... Security is the first and most important role of any government to its citizens.

Iraq is a better place, absolutely worth it.

There are 40,000 Iraqi police on duty around the country. If they detect an attack about to happen, the police are the ones who are supposed to stop it.

The fact of the matter is that we are facing a small group of bitter-enders who are basically trying turn the tide of history.

You know, the country is basically peaceful.

You know there is a certain distortion that gets into the American political debate every four years. We begin to think that everything that happens in the world is in fact dedicated to our elections,

While it's very hard to know exactly how to measure public opinion there, because there's no really good polling, the fact of the matter is that in all the polls I've seen the vast majority of the Iraqis prefer to be free and are pleased that the coalition freed them.

I hope they're going to learn, and as a result of our response, that it isn't going to work. They're not going to change our life, they're not going to have us throw out our Constitution, and they're not going to chase us out of the Middle East.

to provoke sectarian violence among Muslims.