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
The attacks against coalition forces have definitely gone down. Our attacks against the enemy have gone up. Attacks against civilians over time has gone up,
Militarily we are not in any danger of losing. We can't be defeated militarily based on what the enemy currently throws against us.
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,
Why (anyone) would want to move against us in an overt manner that would cause us to use our air or naval power against them would be beyond me... We can generate more military power per square inch than anybody else on Earth, and everybody knows it... If you ever even contemplate our nuclear capability, it should give everybody the clear understanding that there is no power that can match the United States militarily,
In other words, for every 10 enemy you kill you bring on 20 new recruits to their anti-coalition cause then essentially you are working against yourself.
I know you have a lot of work ahead of you. I will continue to work with you all the way.
The international community needs to continue to help and you can certainly count on the United States to continue to help as well,
We certainly will take whatever military action we need to defend ourselves and to prevent the enemy from taking advantage there,
There is always a possibility that things could deteriorate,
What I've asked for is essentially to have a strong mobile combat arms capability, ... That's probably about two brigades worth of combat power, if not more.
We have decided to make sure that we're cautious about how we're operating, and I have nothing to say further than that,
Boots per square inch is not the issue. You have to have solid intelligence in a conflict such as this, so you can get to the terrorists,
there's actually some indication, based on intelligence information that we have, that ammo is starting to be difficult for them to obtain in certain areas.
The scope of devastation is gigantic. The level of work which has to be done is very immense,