Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon.

In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact to shatter and destroy it is not so good.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

Another term for preventive war is aggressive war - starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

The United States never lost a war or won a conference.

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.