September 19, 2002: Saddam Hussein was "past the finish line" in developing nuclear weapons.

February 20, 2003: "He's got weapons of mass destruction."

February 2003 (from his book, "The War Over Iraq"):

"The United States may need to occupy Iraq for some time. Though U.N., European and Arab forces will, as in Afghanistan, contribute troops, the principal responsibility will doubtless fall to the country that liberates Baghdad. According to one estimate, initially as many as 75,000 troops may be required to police the war's aftermath, at a cost of $16 billion a year. As other countries' forces arrive, and as Iraq rebuilds its economy and political system, that force could probably be drawn down to several thousand soldiers after a year or two."

(Reality check: The war has cost over a trillion dollars and 120,000 US troops remain there seven years later.)

February 24, 2003: "In retrospect, [the Bush administration] probably shouldn't have gone down the inspections route ... Doing so merely handed the Europeans and the U.N. — neither of them known for their dissatisfaction with Saddam's rule — a say in the process. The idea, of course, was to mollify them (as well as Colin Powell) and in the process hope that inspectors would stumble across a casus belli. But neither aim has been accomplished.

February 24, 2003: "Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower."

March 1, 2003: "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president."