John Abizaid People Quotations

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,

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.

But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.

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.

Clearly, we understand that we've got an enemy that's in for the long term, al-Qaida and the associated groups that are aligned with it, ... We know that they've got a long-term strategy to fight, to gain ground, to gain influence. And it's very very clear that we've got to have the same sort of long term strategy to contest it. But the keystone to this strategy is helping the people in the region help themselves.

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.

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.

Every American soldier wants as much public support as he can possibly have. That's the soldiers on duty in Iraq, and that's me, as well. We fight better knowing that our people back home support us, back us, and understand what we're doing. It's hugely important.

If there is anything that demonstrates to people the difference between what we stand for and what they stand for, it ought to be pretty apparent to them what it is,

The people who were low-level Baathists need to know they have a part in the future of their country,

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,