The 53+ David Petraeus Quotes

If You Look At Casualties, You Find Countries That Had Much Higher Loss Rates Per Capita Than The Us. Denmark Comes To Mind, The United Kingdom, They Have Suffered Heavy Losses At Various Points, The Germans As Well.

I Will Not Ever Run For Political Office, I Can Assure You Of That.

Iran, As We Have Already Discussed, Has Carried Out Very, Very Harmful Activities Inside Iraq. Funding, Trainings, Arming And, In Some Cases, Even Directing The Activities Of The Special Groups Associated With The Jaish Al-mahdi And The Sadr Militia.

There Is No Military Solution To The Challenges Of Syria.

Us Ambassador To Iraq Ryan Crocker And I Have Repeatedly Sought To Emphasize That The Progress In Iraq Is Fragile And Also, Possibly, Reversible.

We Cleared Many Of Their Towns And Cities And Rural Areas Of Al-qaida Iraq And Other Insurgents.

Al-qaida In Particular Remains Dangerous, And There [in Iraq] Is Some Residual Militia And Special Group Presence. There Are Still Between 20 And 30 Attacks Per Day, Still Periodic Car Bombs And Still Loss Of Innocent Civilians.

I Am Neither A Pessimist Nor An Optimist. I Am A Realist, And The Reality In Iraq Is That It Has Been Very Hard And It Continues To Be Hard.

First And Foremost Is To Not Allow The Reestablishment, If You Will, Of An Extremist Sanctuary That Can Export The Kind Of Terror That Ended Up With Terrorists Taking Down The World Trade Center And Plowing Into The Pentagon And A Field In Pennsylvania. That's The Point: We Started This War Because The Sept. 11 Attack Came From This Area. And We Do Not Fight Alone, But With Some 40 Allies Who Share That View.

There Has, Indeed, Been Very Substantial Progress In Iraq Over The Past Year - Violence Is Down By 80 Percent, Civilian Deaths By About The Same, And So On.

Don't Forget Yemen, Where There Are Also Extremist Elements, As We Saw Recently.

Iraq Has Gone From Being On The Brink To Being On The Mend, And It Clearly Has Some Big Advantages.