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
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.
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,
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,
Our forces will not be on the sidelines.
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.
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,
We certainly will take whatever military action we need to defend ourselves and to prevent the enemy from taking advantage there,
The scope of devastation is gigantic. The level of work which has to be done is very immense,
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.
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,
Tell them we are winning, ... You don't define success as the absence of hard losses. You define it - are you defeating the enemy?
is to build an Iraqi security capacity, all the way from the police level up to the national army level, that is militarily effective and loyal to the established civil government.
If a legitimate government emerges that is broadly seen as being representative of Sunni, Shia and Kurdish interests, I think there is no reason to suppose that we can't bring force levels down in the spring,