Iraqi Insurgency Quotes

There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!

The first time I went to Iraq was October 2002, when Saddam was still in power, and then, subsequently, in January of 2003, about three-and-a-half months before the U.S. invasion. So, I got to see the before and after of Iraq, basically, before and after the war.

The Arab Freedom Movement is, in the Middle East, our natural ally against England. In this connection, the raising of rebellion in Iraq is of special importance.

If we're successful in Iraq ... we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.

There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq, until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq.

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.

People don't know much about what's going on on the ground in Iraq: what you see in the media is heavily censored.

Even the majority of the Sunnis have grown tired of foreign terrorists operating in Iraq.

We're still being challenged in Iraq and the reason why is a free Iraq will be a major defeat in the cause of freedom.

Remember the valiant Iraqi peasant and how he shot down an American Apache with an old weapon.

Take the decision in early March to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr. It was made apparently without knowledge or understanding of the nature of his movement or how widespread it is.

Three years into the war, tens of thousands of American troops remain targets of a growing Iraqi insurgency.

With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.

So here's a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse and that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nasiriyah – the latter a city that briefly rose in revolt against Saddam's regime in 1991 – why should Saddam's forces not keep fighting in Baghdad?

To crush an insurgency you have to have political support from the society in which the insurgency operates.

Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder - and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously. They seek to impose a heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East, and arm themselves with weapons of mass murder. . . . Their aim is to seize power in Iraq, and use it as a safe haven to launch attacks against America and the world.