John Abizaid Quotes (72 Quotes)

I think you will see a lot of strains develop in the political process that will result in violence everywhere in the country - but it's controllable, it's workable and it will lead to a much better future for these people.

It's also natural in that part of the world to blame what people view as the... as the most important authority in the region, and that currently is the United States of America.

The war has moved to the west, which is a good . . . indicator that Iraqi and U.S. forces are having an effect elsewhere, ... The amount of infiltration across the Syrian border remains a concern, but it's down, not so much because of Syrian activity, but because of U.S. and Iraqi activity.

But I am satisfied that the information that we have that this is the work of Zarqawi, is accurate.

I know you have a lot of work ahead of you. I will continue to work with you all the way.

Today we provided two more heavy-lift helicopters that can come over from Afghanistan,

The attacks against coalition forces have definitely gone down. Our attacks against the enemy have gone up. Attacks against civilians over time has gone up,

there's actually some indication, based on intelligence information that we have, that ammo is starting to be difficult for them to obtain in certain areas.

There are certainly considerations that we must make with regard to the level of the forces,

Militarily we are not in any danger of losing. We can't be defeated militarily based on what the enemy currently throws against us.

You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

Certainly our goal is to leave Iraq, but we can't leave Iraq with our forces until we know that the Iraqi security forces are capable and efficient enough to defend the sovereignty of the nation.

Morale is good; troops are confident; leaders are capable.

But clearly the fact that we've gone from zero Iraqi security forces on duty in May to up to 200,000 today is an enormous accomplishment, but it's not enough.

Yet, we believe that that's probably the vigilance of Iraqi security forces and some of our proactive measures the night before probably saved lives.

And the answer is it is, but it's also a difficult road to go on. There are peaks and valleys that you go through, but overall, the trend is good. We're certainly confident. And the most important thing we're confident about is that the Iraqis want to do this. They want to take the fight. They will take the fight.

As far as Zarqawi is concerned, there is a network of extremists; it's not just Zarqawi.

The international community needs to continue to help and you can certainly count on the United States to continue to help as well,

We have decided to make sure that we're cautious about how we're operating, and I have nothing to say further than that,

But the truth of the matter is that there is there is an opportunity for them to participate in the economic and political future of the country and certainly in the security life of the country.

In other words, for every 10 enemy you kill you bring on 20 new recruits to their anti-coalition cause then essentially you are working against yourself.

Being on the run, having to change the way that you do business, being unable to plan in a safe and secure environment, always looking over your shoulder, knowing that some day somebody's going to knock on your door and it's going to be your last.

And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly.

The way we need to deal with them is to be offensive -- to find them and to attack them and also to ensure that we pay attention to what's moving along the Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi borders in particular,

I will tell you that the insurgency, as long as politics continues to move in the direction that it appears to be moving and the Iraqi security forces continue to move in the direction they are moving, the insurgency does not have a chance for victory,

Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time.

We'll try to include Iraqi officers in our staffs. We will do everything we can to empower Iraqi security forces to stand up on their own and operate where they can alone.

I would say that U. S. officials and Iraqi officials are looking for the right people in the Sunni community to talk to in order to ensure that the Sunni Arab community ... becomes part of the political process,

We've got to get more senior Iraqis involved -- former military types -- involved in the Iraq security forces, ... In the next couple of days, you'll see a large number of senior officers being appointed to key positions in the Ministry of Defense and the Iraqi joint-staff and in Iraqi field commands.

We've spent too much time over the last couple of years talking about the Kurds and the Shia and the Sunnis. We've got to start talking about Iraqis,

The real target is creating enough chaos in Iraq so that an extremist government can emerge there that would be friendly and conducive to the form of ideology that bin Laden, Zawahiri and Zarqawi believe in.

Capturing any member of any terrorist cell or any insurgent cell that we may happen to come across is always very, very valuable, and the thing that interests me is that in most instances after a time people talk and they tell us what they know.

We have a number of killed in the action in Nasiriya with the Marines -- I believe that number will remain less than 10 -- and a number of wounded,

And clearly we know that the vast majority of the insurgents are from the Sunni Arab community.

that this is not a rush to failure. It's a rush to victory.

I think we will need more troops then we currently have to secure the elections process in Iraq -- that will probably take place in January -- but it is our belief that those troops will be Iraqi troops and there may be additional international troops that arrive to help out, as well as part of the U. N. mission. So I don't see need for more American troops, but we can't discount it.

Oh, the transition concerns me because as we move towards an important political event, it's clear to me that the terrorists and insurgents will move as hard as they can to disrupt this process.

It's clear to me now that we've got to reach out to the Arab Sunni community in particular in an effort to cause some moderate political activity to take place so they join the future of Iraq.

I believe that there are elements of extra-legal militias that are moving around doing some of this damage. There may be people with misguided loyalties in some of the security services, although less in the army than in the police.

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there'll be additional violence.

There are a lot of people in the Middle East who believe our weakness is our inability to stay the course, and they believe that two casualties today, two casualties tomorrow, four the next day, will eventually drive us out,

I don't know if I would make any comment about that other than to say that there is a lot of work against the insurgency,

The sectarian tensions in the region are historic. They exist, they are a fact of life that have to be dealt with. The question for us is whether these endemic, sectarian problems come to the surface to the point where it leads to a civil war.

And over time, I think, as Iraqi security capacity builds, you'll see American and coalition presence there decline.

Some of them did very well and some of them did not. And in the south, a number of units, both in the police force and also in the ICDC did not stand up to the intimidators of the forces of Sadr's militia and that was a great disappointment to us,

But all that having been said, you can't, in a city of a million people like Karbala, or 5 million like Baghdad, you can't be in all places at all times.

We certainly will take whatever military action we need to defend ourselves and to prevent the enemy from taking advantage there,

Now, people will say, 'Well, that's a very small number,' but when you understand that they're organized in cellular structure, that they have a brutal and determined cadre, that they know how to operate covertly, they have access to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you'll understand how dangerous they are,

What I've asked for is essentially to have a strong mobile combat arms capability, ... That's probably about two brigades worth of combat power, if not more.

Clearly the Secretary of Defense, my boss, would like nothing better than to get Osama bin Laden and to get... to ensure the complete defeat of al-Qaida, because we know that al-Qaida is planning operations against the United States even as we speak here.