CBS news anchor Dan Rather has interviewed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. When asked what it was like to talk to a crazy man, Saddam said, ‘It’s not so bad.’
I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.
What we have found is that we were the principal mediators in many cases between the Iraqis and their own security forces and their own government, and so you have to almost embrace that role.
At that time, about July 5, we had no Iraqi corrections officers working for us. It was a responsibility of the CPA, with contractors, to set up a training program.
What our men and women in uniform are doing is providing for the Iraqi people and other surrounding nations the opportunity to see, to taste and to experience the democracy that equals freedom and ultimately justice.
In fact, the Iraqi foreign minister admitted in March 2003 that Iraqi funds were sent to families of Palestinian suicide bombers who attacked and killed innocent Israeli citizens, and also 12 Americans in Israel in 2003.
The United States has already experienced the danger of flawed refugee vetting as well as the potential for refugees to be radicalized once they are here. In 2011, two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Kentucky for conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad in support of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIL.
All Iraqis can unite to defeat terrorism and can unite to rebuild the country.
While it’s very hard to know exactly how to measure public opinion there, because there’s no really good polling, the fact of the matter is that in all the polls I’ve seen the vast majority of the Iraqis prefer to be free and are pleased that the coalition freed them.
We need to give the Iraqis a chance to build their own future. It should be in their hands. It must be in their hands. That is what democracy is all about. We can teach it, we can explain it, but they must want it enough to make it work for them.
January 30th will be a historic day for the Middle East and the world. The Iraqi people will take the next step toward a free and democratic society as they place their votes for a transitional Iraqi government.
Saddam Hussein was a nightmare for the Iraqi people, and his execution marks the end of an era when violence against innocent men, women and children was a means to wealth and power.
We are not utilizing the Iraqi oil for U.S. purposes. We are not asking that the Iraqi oil be used to pay our military expenses. We are asking only that the Iraqi oil be used to rebuild Iraq – that is, to rebuild Iraq for the Iraqi people.
Although combat operations unseated the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, a poor understanding of the recent histories of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples undermined efforts to consolidate early battlefield gains into lasting security.
Fomenting an ongoing political crisis is actually one of ISIS’s objectives; it distracts policymakers’ attention from terrorists inside Iraq; and it draws critical Iraqi security forces and law enforcement away from the front lines of the battle against ISIS.
The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan. Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces.
Our government strives to create an independent and impartial judiciary that applies the law without bias or favoritism. And we are incorporating into our security forces all Iraqis who have taken up arms to defend their families and communities.
The Iraqi constitution is clear in two articles: one says that Iraq is united, and the second one prevents any legislation or acts that impact its unity even from the regional side.
The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought.
Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy.
Needless to say, it was the greatest of privileges to serve with the selfless men and women – Iraqi and American and those of our coalition partners, civilian as well as military – who did the hard, dangerous work of the surge. There seldom was an easy period; each day was tough.
The Iraqi people are living a long-running tragedy because of the legacy of the old regime, the Americans and their actions that are unsuitable for Iraqi society, and the weakness of national resolve.
The largest single contributor to Iraq’s security is that effort of Iraqi people who continue to step forward to join the various Iraqi security forces.
One day I am at home, watching dramatic images of Iraqi Yazidis fleeing for their lives being aired nonstop on 24-hour news channels. Days later, I am there, staring at tens of thousands of displaced Iraqis and feeling a 35-millimeter frame cannot capture the scope of devastation and heartbreak before me.
When the government is handed over to the Iraqi Council on 30 June, many have declared, oh, the Americans must never leave because civil unrest may erupt. Well, I agree, we cannot abruptly depart, but Iraq needs to step up to the plate on 30 June.
We need to get our sons and daughters home and their responsibility for the security of Iraq needs to be assumed by Iraqis who will stand up and toe the line for their countries.
We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.
We should not mislead the Iraqis into thinking they have unlimited time to reach a settlement. The longer they think that, the less likely they will be to act.
Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.
The proximate cause of Iraq’s unraveling was the increasing authoritarian, sectarian, and corrupt conduct of the Iraqi government and its leader after the departure of the last U.S. combat forces in 2011.
The Iraqi Free Press, which did not exist 18 months ago because there was no such thing as the Iraqi Free Press, broke a story about the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, which could potentially turn out to be the largest scandal in history.
We try very quickly to show that we are not at war with the Iraqi people. We’re trying to deal with the people who are indeed themselves at war with the Iraqi people.
If it does not serve the Iraqi people, there are only political means that must be followed to reform the government – a new government that we must give a chance to prove that it is there to serve the people.
We need to make it clear that we will withdraw from Iraq within 6 to 9 months – so that the Iraqis will know that they must stand up and defend the opportunity given to them.
I would like to tell our American, British and Spanish friends that the Iraqi crisis is not a problem between the United States and France, but between those who want to move forward in the logic of war and the international community.
Over time, the desire of Iraqis to contribute to their own security has manifested itself in citizens volunteering for the police, the Army, and concerned local citizen programs.
The face of terrorism in Iraq is dead. Abu Musab al Zarqawi brutalized, tortured, and killed thousands of innocent people, forcing Iraqis to live in fear. The Iraqi people finally had enough, and gave up his whereabouts to the Iraqi security forces.
If we are lucky, and George W. Bush is right, we are about to witness the War of the Happy Iraqis.
I urge the Iraqi leadership for sake of its own people… to seize this opportunity and thereby begin to end the isolation and suffering of the Iraqi people.
Unlike the Afghans and Iraqis, the South Korean people solidly supported the American military presence, which was part of a United Nations operation.
A war on Al-Qaeda could have been won with a decisive military strike in Tora Bora during December 2001, but American fighters at Tora Bora were refused requests for more forces when they trapped Al-Qaeda there; the Pentagon was busy husbanding resources for the Iraqi invasion.
I think the American people have been surprised by the enthusiasm with which the Iraqis have taken to elections and politics.
I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.
Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions, and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.
The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The time frame is very small to disarm the militia, to bring about a security situation in which the governing council, the 24 Iraqis or however many others they appoint, can govern the country.
Out of my desire to complete Iraq’s independence and to finish the withdrawal of the occupation forces from our holy lands, I am obliged to halt military operations of the honest Iraqi resistance until the withdrawal of the occupation forces is complete.
