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,
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.
It makes sense that as NATO forces go in, and they're more in numbers, that we could drop some of the U.S. requirements somewhat,
Yet, we believe that that's probably the vigilance of Iraqi security forces and some of our proactive measures the night before probably saved lives.
Our forces will not be on the sidelines.
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,
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.