Rick Atkinson Quotes
I was with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, really in the middle of nowhere, about 80 miles south of Baghdad. And it was almost midnight, and I got a computer message from the home office of the Washington Post asking me to call them. I did call them and was told that I'd won the Pulitzer Prize.
Atkinson, Rick. "Live Q&A." The Washington Post, 8 Apr. 2003.
Matthew Brady had a group of 23 photographers who traveled with the Union troops, photographing scenes and making pictures in their portable darkrooms as they went. They were, in effect, the first embedded journalists covering a war. Brady’s corps made 10,000 photographs, many of which are famous to this day. Brady expected the government to buy his photos after the war but Congress would not do so. Brady had to sell his New York studio and go into bankruptcy. In 1875 Congress finally voted him $25,000 but by then his photography business was destroyed and Brady had become an alcoholic a condition from which he died.
Galloway, had campaigned against Blair and the Labor Party and had beaten the Labour MP in his district which was predominantly Muslim. He had been vehemently opposed to the Iraq War.
Webb’s opponent had accused him of not being patriotic because he opposed many of President George W. Bush’s Iraq War policies. This technique of publicly intimating that an opponent was not patriotic because he opposed the hawkish proposals of the President, had worked very well for the Republicans before. Presidential Candidate John Kerry, a decorated war hero, was attacked and remarkably Senator Max Cleland who had lost three of his four limbs in battle was unseated by attacking his patriotism. When Senator George Allen, fighting for reelection, used the technique on Webb, Web responded much more aggressively than earlier Democrats had when faced with the accusation. Senator Allen, like most of the patriotism critics of heroic veterans, had never been in combat.
The George W. Bush Administration had gone to war against Iraq for reasons that turned out not to be true, and then after a military victory with few casualties, botched the occupation of the country and a vicious insurgency developed bogging down the nation in its longest war in history. The major burden fell on the armed forces and their families. The hearings were in part examining the Bush Administration policies.
The “Caliphate” is the Islamic concept of a single leader of all Muslims in the world who has both Religious and Political power at the same time. After the death of the Prophet Mohammed, there were a succession of Caliphs and Baghdad was considered the seat of the Caliphate for much of that time. For fanatic Muslims who want to bring back the Caliphate, Baghdad has an importance that is almost on a par with Mecca and Jerusalem. The George W, Bush administration did not recognize the importance of Baghdad and Iraq to non-Iraqi Muslims and the importance of driving infidels (Christians) our of their “seat of government,” This was one of the motivations that brought so many “foreign fighters” into Iraq who would not stop at anything in order to get the infidels out.
He had been asked by a reporter if his Marines would be able to take Baghdad in the American invasion of Iraq, 2007. Kelly commanded the Marines charged with taking Baghdad. They did.
Lawrence Rush "Rick" Atkinson IV is an American author, most recently of The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775–1777, the first volume in the Revolution Trilogy. He has won Pulitzer Prizes in history and journalism.
