A Quote by Jean Parker
Iraq is a quagmire and has been a humanitarian disaster for the Iraqis. There is no way forward without ending the occupation.
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There is no way forward without ending the occupation.
In terms of the idea of long-term occupation - I have been reading a little bit more about this period - and you can see in that occupation are many lessons for the current occupation of Iraq. So we have these connections that go way back that people aren't aware of.
This year marks 20 years since the Rwandan genocide -- the world's greatest humanitarian tragedy of the late 20th century. The international community had pledged 'never again' in the aftermath of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s. Yet, we are witnessing today a different type of humanitarian disaster unfolding in Syria and Iraq.
The conduct of President Bush's war of choice has been plagued with incompetent civilian leadership decisions that have cost many lives and rendered the war on and occupation of Iraq a strategic policy disaster for the United States.
Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.In my new book, I open with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld. In October 2001, he said of Afghanistan: "It's not a quagmire." Ten years later there are 150,000 Western troops there.
The Islamic world is not only suffering from the American occupation of Palestine and Iraq, it's also suffering from the unbelievable corruption in Afghanistan by Afghans themselves and also in Iraq - I'm just giving these 2 examples of countries which are under direct occupation; I do not mean at all to negate the terrible events that led to this or what's going on with the foreign occupation there.
Iraq has not been disarmed 100 percent [but] in terms of what they [Iraqis] have accomplished there are no meaningful weapons or weapons production capability in Iraq today.
I think our great task is to make certain that our young men and women in the military do not get sucked into never- ending, perpetual warfare within the quagmire of Syria and Iraq. And I will do my very best to make sure that that doesn't happen.
Unlike Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war without knowing what she was doing, I would not have had our people in Iraq. Iraq was disaster.
The attempt to minimize cost and maximize profits often interfered with our true mission in Iraq. We should have been working to get jobs for Iraqis, but the contractors found it cheaper to import Nepalese and others. This increased resentment, contributed to unemployment, and to our losing the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.
We need to make a distinction between misled Iraqis, those who believe that they are carrying weapons to liberate Iraq from what they call occupation, and criminal gangs that came from outside and wants to wage a deadly war on the Iraqi people, killing women and children in mosques and churches.
We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.
Every year, millions of people from Iran and Iraq travel to each other's countries, and we also have marriages between Iraqis and Iranians. Many Iranians were born in Iraq, and many Iraqis were born in Iran. This is a kind of special, cordial amicable ties.
I believe that we will succeed in Iraq, because, one, the Iraqis want to live in a free society. And, two, that the Iraqis want to take the fight to the enemy. And people want me to put a timetable on things; that's a huge mistake. Putting a timetable on this - on our stay there in Iraq simply emboldens the enemy and discourages our friends.
The way in which the USA and Great Britain delivered Iraq to the Iraqis, the way and means that this played out, that is the endgame.
I know it is said repeatedly that I was in support of the American invasion in Iraq. It is simply not true. I was in favor of helping the Iraqis, and most specifically Ahmad Chelebi and the Kurdish leadership to set up an independent government of free Iraq. I think that would have been the right thing to do.
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