I have absolutely no regret about my vote against this war. The same questions remain. The cost in human lives, the cost to our budget, probably 100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less.

Nancy Pelosi made this remark in the early months of the Iraq War, reflecting on her October 2002 vote against the congressional authorization to use military force in Iraq. Her reference to “that statue” points to the televised toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square in April 2003, an image widely used at the time to symbolize the fall of the regime. Pelosi’s comments frame the war as an undertaking whose justifications remained unproven while its costs—American and Iraqi casualties and large fiscal outlays—were rapidly mounting. The statement functions as a retrospective defense of her dissenting vote and a critique of the war’s strategic and moral calculus.

The quote argues that symbolic victories and regime-change imagery cannot justify the human and financial toll of a large-scale war. By saying “the same questions remain,” Pelosi suggests that the core rationale for the invasion—its necessity, legality, and the evidence offered for it—was still unresolved even after dramatic early scenes like the statue’s fall. The line about “probably 100 billion” underscores opportunity cost: public money and lives expended for an outcome that, in her view, could have been achieved through less destructive means. Overall, the statement positions skepticism and restraint as principled, not merely partisan, and treats the war’s spectacle as a poor substitute for clear objectives and accountability.