Lawrence Eagleburger's Quotes

There's Hezbollah, there's Hamas, there is a whole range of terrorist targets out there related to Palestine and to Israel that we ought to be trying to deal with. And there's a great deal of targets in the Philippines, Indonesia. You name it, there are a number of places where there are targets that we ought to be trying to deal with.

We must advertise to U.S. business that we are there, that our attitude has changed, and that we care. When we are asked to help, we have to perform and provide the right advice.

What I can't quite see at this stage is that the evidence, even to the president, seems to be that clear. And if it is that clear, I can't understand why we are not capable of convincing our closest allies that given that evidence, they ought to join us in this effort.

What is more important is that Foreign Service Officers understand business, about the needs of U.S. business and how to help U.S. companies make the right connections abroad.

Any Ambassador or Foreign Service Officer who has his or her head screwed on right knows that the U.S. position in the world is far more dependent on our ability to compete in world markets.

One nuclear war is going to be the last nuclear - the last war, frankly, if it really gets out of hand. And I just don't think we ought to be prepared to accept that sort of thing.

The whole nuclear thing is a terrible mess and it's hard for me to understand why it is that we, the United States, seem to be the only ones that are really particularly concerned about it and prepared to do something.

In the best of all worlds everyone in the Embassy is doing something to assist U.S. exports.

My father was somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan.

Now there is a cultural change under way in the Foreign Service.

The consequence of a world full of nuclear powers to me is so incomprehensible in terms of the dangers that that implies.

There are sometimes problems for which there is no immediate solution, and there are sometimes problems for which there is no solution.

We have to spend a lot more time training people to be good advocates of U.S. business.

And beyond that, the next issue is how do we guarantee one of these weapons, not necessarily this missile, but nuclear weapons ends up in the hands of Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group.

I believe that sooner or later we're going to have to deal with Saddam Hussein, because of his general reputation, because of what I'm convinced he's done with regard to terrorism and the support thereof. But I'm not at all sure I believe that it has to be right now.

I think what he's - what he believes, and he may be correct, I don't know, that we have some intelligence information that leads us to know some things about what's going on in Iraq that we haven't revealed to others.

If we had made it clear from the very beginning that we were not going to tolerate another nuclear power on the face of the earth, and had done it in Korea, where we could have accomplished it militarily, if necessary, I would put a stop to it and would have put a stop to it there.

In a time of constrained resources we will have to shift emphasis. but not necessarily from the traditional Political Officer to the traditional Economic Officer.

My own view of this, by the way, is, if the war on terrorism is successful over time, in its own way it's going to box Saddam in in a way that's going to make it much more difficult for him to maintain his power, and that he's going to become increasingly isolated. I think that's going to take time.

My point here is I think international pressures of our acting unilaterally again are going to be such that the administration will say, well, we just can't take this on now.

Small- and medium-sized companies do not know what we have to offer and that needs to be changed. We must react just as strenuously on their behalf as we do for larger companies.

Some day, somebody is going to have to start talking about what happens to us all a decade from now if we let these North Koreans and the Iranians go forward with their nuclear weapons program.

That said, there is a tendency to help the large industrial conglomerate more quickly than the small company you have never heard of. That is something in the culture we are trying to change.