You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

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 is always a possibility that things could deteriorate,

It’s clear to me now that we’ve got to reach out to the Arab Sunni community in particular in an effort to cause some moderate political activity to take place so they join the future...

We’ve spent too much time over the last couple of years talking about the Kurds and the Shia and the Sunnis. We’ve got to start talking about Iraqis,

It’s interesting. When I’m in Washington everyone seems to think there is a set schedule, an exact plan. It just doesn’t work that way. There is a theatre of war. The commanders in the field...

Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.

We must fight the terrorists together so that we can have a free and prosperous future for the Iraqi people,

The international community needs to continue to help and you can certainly count on the United States to continue to help as well,

Being on the run, having to change the way that you do business, being unable to plan in a safe and secure environment, always looking over your shoulder, knowing that some day somebody’s going to...

Tell them we are winning, … You don’t define success as the absence of hard losses. You define it – are you defeating the enemy?

necessarily an unusual or catastrophic event.

Undoubtedly, there are members of the former regime that are cooperating in some fashion and then there are extremists that are within Iraq that are cooperating with them.

The war has moved to the west, which is a good . . . indicator that Iraqi and U.S. forces are having an effect elsewhere, … The amount of infiltration across the Syrian border remains...

The sectarian tensions in the region are historic. They exist, they are a fact of life that have to be dealt with. The question for us is whether these endemic, sectarian problems come to the...

I don’t believe Iran is a suicide state.

When we continue to pick at the wound and show the pictures over and over again it just creates the image ? a false image ? like this is the sort of stuff that is...

We have decided to make sure that we’re cautious about how we’re operating, and I have nothing to say further than that,

Our forces will not be on the sidelines.

The important thing is whether or not the overall movement towards stability and security is falling more and more in the hands of the Iraqis,

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...

We need to make it very clear to the Iranians, the same way we made it clear to the Soviet Union and China, that their first use of nuclear weapons would result in the devastation...

We’ve got to get more senior Iraqis involved — former military types — involved in the Iraq security forces, … In the next couple of days, you’ll see a large number of senior officers being...

And over time, I think, as Iraqi security capacity builds, you’ll see American and coalition presence there decline.

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there’ll be additional violence.

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 weather was bad. We don’t know of any enemy action. The investigation continues,

Clearly the Secretary of Defense, my boss, would like nothing better than to get Osama bin Laden and to get… to ensure the complete defeat of al-Qaida, because we know that al-Qaida is planning operations...

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,...

I will tell you that the insurgency, as long as politics continues to move in the direction that it appears to be moving and the Iraqi security forces continue to move in the direction they...

Nobody’s more mindful of the sacrifices of our troops than those of us that command them.

We’ll try to include Iraqi officers in our staffs. We will do everything we can to empower Iraqi security forces to stand up on their own and operate where they can alone.

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...

Militarily we are not in any danger of losing. We can’t be defeated militarily based on what the enemy currently throws against us.

But all that having been said, you can’t, in a city of a million people like Karbala, or 5 million like Baghdad, you can’t be in all places at all times.

There are a lot of people in the Middle East who believe our weakness is our inability to stay the course, and they believe that two casualties today, two casualties tomorrow, four the next day,...

It’s a workable document from which good things can flow.

As far as Zarqawi is concerned, there is a network of extremists; it’s not just Zarqawi.

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,

If a legitimate government emerges in Iraq that is broadly seen as being representative of Sunni, Shia and Kurdish interests, I think there’s no reason to suppose that we can’t bring force levels down in...

Every American soldier wants as much public support as he can possibly have. That’s the soldiers on duty in Iraq, and that’s me, as well. We fight better knowing that our people back home support...

We’ve got to ensure that the quality and the capability of these forces will be good enough to withstand the challenges that the insurgents and the terrorists will present to the new Iraqi government.

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 real target is creating enough chaos in Iraq so that an extremist government can emerge there that would be friendly and conducive to the form of ideology that bin Laden, Zawahiri and Zarqawi believe...

I think you will see a lot of strains develop in the political process that will result in violence everywhere in the country – but it’s controllable, it’s workable and it will lead to a...

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,

We must help others in the region help themselves by promoting self-reliant partners who are willing to face the enemy.

The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth and it just can’t walk away from the Middle East and central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

the shield behind which politics take place.

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...