John Abizaid
John Abizaid
John Philip Abizaidis a retired United States Army general and former U.S. Central Commandcommander, overseeing American military operations in a 27-country region, from the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, to South and Central Asia, covering much of the Middle East. CENTCOM oversees 250,000 US troops. Abizaid succeeded General Tommy Franks as Commander, USCENTCOM, on July 7, 2003, and was also elevated to the rank of four-star general the same week. He was succeeded by Admiral William J. Fallon on...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSoldier
Date of Birth1 April 1951
CountryUnited States of America
And the answer is it is, but it's also a difficult road to go on. There are peaks and valleys that you go through, but overall, the trend is good. We're certainly confident. And the most important thing we're confident about is that the Iraqis want to do this. They want to take the fight. They will take the fight.
The weather was bad. We don't know of any enemy action. The investigation continues,
The way we need to deal with them is to be offensive -- to find them and to attack them and also to ensure that we pay attention to what's moving along the Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi borders in particular,
So we're bringing in as much as we can. I know that NATO forces will be coming and certainly we're bringing more forces from the US, more helicopters.
Of course you've heard and seen in the press that Osama bin Laden is surrounded, we have him cornered and we know where he is, etc., etc. And of course, we don't know that,
The people who were low-level Baathists need to know they have a part in the future of their country,
I think we will need more troops then we currently have to secure the elections process in Iraq -- that will probably take place in January -- but it is our belief that those troops will be Iraqi troops and there may be additional international troops that arrive to help out, as well as part of the U.N. mission. So I don't see need for more American troops, but we can't discount it.
We must help others in the region help themselves by promoting self-reliant partners who are willing to face the enemy.
We must fight the terrorists together so that we can have a free and prosperous future for the Iraqi people,
Some of them did very well and some of them did not. And in the south, a number of units, both in the police force and also in the ICDC did not stand up to the intimidators of the forces of Sadr's militia and that was a great disappointment to us,
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,
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.
The international community needs to continue to help and you can certainly count on the United States to continue to help as well,
I don't know if I would make any comment about that other than to say that there is a lot of work against the insurgency,