Iraqi Quotes - page 7

Given Iraq's strategic location, its large oil reserves, and the suffering of the Iraqi people, we cannot afford to replace a despot with chaos. It would be a tragedy if we removed a tyrant in Iraq only to leave chaos in its wake. (Joe Biden)
...as we do bring our troops home, we cannot lose sight of our very real strategic national interests in this region... I will order specialized units to engage in narrow and targeted operations against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region. They will also provide security for U.S. troops and personnel and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote stability in the country, but only to the extent we believe such training is actually working. I would also consider, as I have said before, leaving some forces in the Kurdish area to protect the fragile but real democracy and relative peace and security that has developed there. View quote
Hillary Clinton
No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on for the next days - we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote. View quote
Hillary Clinton
The Iraqi people are some of the warmest people you'll meet in your life. They are extremely receptive to strangers. Their hospitality is immense. View quote
Scott Ritter
Our guys working this area for a living all believe Chalabi and all those guys in their Bond Street suits are charlatans. To take them for a source of anything except a fantasy trip would be a real stretch. But it's an article of faith among those with no military experience that the Iraqi military is low-hanging fruit. View quote
Scott Ritter
I really am tired of all the Clinton Democrats running around getting all-sanctimonious over Iraq. It was them who killed 1.5 to 2.2 million Iraqis through sanctions. Sanctions that Madeline Albright, their illustrious Secretary of State, when confronted with the fact of 500,000 dead Iraqi children, said it was a price she was willing to pay. View quote
Scott Ritter
In the Gulf War, U.S. Marine Corps wheeled vehicles were killing Iraqi T-72 tanks. View quote
Ralph Peters
But the fall of Ramadi has galvanized the Iraqi government. So, with the additional steps I ordered last month, we're speeding up training of ISIL forces, including volunteers from Sunni tribes in Anbar Province. View quote
Barack Obama
We've persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people - a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it's time to turn the page. View quote
Barack Obama
Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife. But ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals. View quote
Barack Obama
Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. (Barack Obama)
To all of you who served in Iraq, we saw your heroism in pushing out a dictator whose brutality must be condemned, never praised. In defeating an insurgency. In giving the Iraqi people a chance. And no matter what has happened since, your valor in the deserts, in fierce urban combat, will be honored in the annals of military history. View quote
Barack Obama
There are countless reasons the American people have lost confidence in the President's Iraq policy, but chief among them has been the administration's insistence on making promises and assurances about progress and victory that do not appear to be grounded in the reality of the facts. We have been told we would be greeted as liberators. We have been promised the insurgency was in its last throes. We have been assured again and again that we are making progress and that the Iraqis would soon stand up so we could stand down and our brave sons and daughters could start coming home. We have been asked to wait, we have been asked to be patient, and we have been asked to give the President and the new Iraqi Government 6 more months, and then 6 more months after that, and then 6 more months after that. View quote
Barack Obama
Is the Iraqi state succeeding? I think there are some prospects for this country to be moving in the right direction. But the legacies of the past, the problems are really, really monumental... We need to deliver. Otherwise we will not be able to justify what we do in the eyes of our public. And public opinion does matter in Iraq. People speak their minds. People are engaged, are interested... Life is coming back... Every time I go out of the presidential palace in Baghdad - and I do try to go out as often as I can - I do see normalcy coming back, more and more. I do think there is a window of opportunity - it should be cherished. We've not had it like this for a long, long time... It's precious, but precarious. View quote
Barham Salih
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. View quote
Noam Chomsky
I think murdering Iraqi union leaders is criminal, for example. And a lot of what the insurgents have done is criminal. But, you know, you rank the priorities. Our priority is to stop major war crimes, like Fallujah for example. So yeah, what the resistance is doing, one can also criticize, harshly in fact. But in any kind of ranking, even if we're on Mars, and certainly if we're in the United States, what is vastly more important is our own crimes, which are much worse, and they're ours. View quote
Noam Chomsky
Forbes magazine has named Mel Gibson this year's most powerful celebrity. ... Forbes' least powerful celebrity? [Miller displayed the widely circulated image from the Lynndie England photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner with wires attached to his outstretched arms] You're looking at him. Screw this guy. ... [He's a] bad guy. View quote
Dennis Miller
President Bush says he is concerned about the Iraqi people, but if Iraqi people are dying in numbers, then American policy will be challenged very strongly. View quote
Peter Arnett
It's ridiculous and painful to use the Arabic of an Iraqi poet who lived centuries ago to describe what we in Iraq are suffering today. View quote
Hassan Blasim
Some Iraqi writers are more daring today and have excellent imaginations and their material is rich in human experience. But the Arab prizes, once again, are part of the context of life in the Arab world - anarchy, confusion, and corruption. View quote
Hassan Blasim
For the Muslim, religion traditionally was not only universal but also central in the sense that it constituted the essential basis and focus of identity and loyalty. It was religion which distinguished those who belonged to the group and marked them off from those outside the group. A Muslim Iraqi would feel far closer bonds with a non-Iraqi Muslim than with a non-Muslim Iraqi. Muslims of different countries, speaking different languages, share the same memories of a common and sacred past, the same awareness of corporate identity, the same sense of a common predicament and destiny. It is not nation or country which, as in the West, forms the historic basis of identity, but the religio-political community, and the imported Western idea of ethnic and territorial nationhood remains, like secularism, alien and incompletely assimilated. (Bernard Lewis)
The mujahideen will give America a taste of the degradation you have inflicted on the Iraqi people. View quote
Abu Musab Zarqawi
We declare that the Iraqi army is an apostate, agent army allied to the crusaders and came to destroy Islam and Muslims. We will fight it. View quote
Abu Musab Zarqawi
The Iraqi people consist of brotherly nationalities which have amalgamated in order to defend the existence of the eternal Iraqi Republic. [This is] why we always declare 'long live true Iraqi unity, for in it lies our strength. View quote
Abd al-Karim Qasim
The woman, your sister, has achieved victory. She will share with you, sooner or later, the responsibilities of administration. The peasant, likewise, has achieved victory, and so has the employer. Formerly, the employer used to fear for his life and for his property. Now, the employer and the worker are brothers working together in both prosperity and adversity to protect the gains of the Iraqi Republic. They work constantly not for any transient selfish interest but for the interest of the people. View quote
Abd al-Karim Qasim