IRAQ IN THEIR OWN WORDS

There has been so much said and written on the War on Terror that it boggles the mind...What else can be said on the matter??The news in Iraq is the same...car bombing here...another one there...and another kiddnapping...secular murdering...

"I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

Ronald Regan

JOURNALIST

Is U.S. credibility on the line over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

GEORGE W. BUSH
"Uh, I'm not sure exactly what that means"

"There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments."

Donald Rumsfield

It is somewhat puzzling, I think, that you can have a hundred percent certainty about the weapons of mass destruction's existence and zero certainty about where they are.

HANS BLIX

Everybody knows that Iraq had weapons of

mass destruction.

COLIN POWELL

We know where they are, they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat....???

DONALD RUMSFELD

I don't know anybody that I can think of that has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons.

DONALD RUMSFELD

There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it and that's just a fact.

DONALD RUMSFLED

His regime has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons and let there be no doubt about it.

DONALD RUMSFELD

We know for a fact there are weapons there.

ARI FLEISHER

And we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.

DICK CHENEY

I don't think it is an accident at all that so much of the justification turned out to be fallacious, misleading, deliberately so.

CHAS FREEMAN

We found the weapons of mass destruction. Uh, you know, we found biological laboratories.

GEORGE W. BUSH.

??Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq.

RICHARD CLARKE

Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says the situation in Iraq is "dire" as a result of mistakes made by the US government.

Bush's "strategies are not wrong, but they are failing," in part because "they do not define the scale of the emerging World War III, between the West and the forces of Islam,"

Richard Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.
I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

"I think the world would be better off if a number of leaders around the world were out of power. The question is what price should the United States pay," says Clarke. "The price we paid was very, very high, and we're still paying that price for doing it."

Richard Clarke

"We’re trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going. ... Some things are going well, and some things obviously are not going well."

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld

"Charged with developing a strategy for publicizing the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States."a strategic communications" task force helped write and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing in September 2002 the theme of Iraq's purported nuclear threat ,the task force's mission was to "educate the public" about the threat posed by Hussein and (in the reporters' words) "to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad."

"Ultimately the sectarian violence is going to be dealt with by Iraqis,"

DonaldRumsfeld

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called the Iraq violence "unfortunate" and "tragic." He said he "remains confident in the good, common sense of the American people" that running away from Iraq would amount to victory for "murderers and extremists."

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain's hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia."

At a meeting on December 12, 2002 George tenets assured the President that the evidence against Saddam amounted to a "slam dunk case,"

In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists and had relationships with al Qaeda-and his regime is no more

The criticism threatens to undermine the morale of U.S. troops who are risking their lives while "a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie

"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best." President Bush, saying that he wants Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to stay at the Pentagon.
• Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's leadership is "exactly what is needed at this critical period."

"Dismissing the entire Iraqi Army en masse after the war ... was a major mistake.

I think we are in a real mess. There are eighty-seven attacks on Americans every day, and our people in Baghdad can't even leave the International Zone without being heavily armored.

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq,"

Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste

The U.S. military went into war in Iraq led by a Defense secretary - Rumsfeld - who "didn't understand leadership, who was abusive, who was arrogant, who didn't build a strong team."

Retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste.

Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically."

Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste

Insufficient Force

"I made the case to General Franks and Secretary Rumsfeld before the President that I was not sure we had enough troops. ... The President’s military advisors felt that the size of the force was adequate; they may still feel that years later. Some of us don’t. I don’t. In my perspective, I would have preferred more troops, but you know, this conflict is not over."

Former Secretary of State General Colin Powell

Vice President Dick Cheney tells General Oliver North that the War on Terror "is a war that we can win, but it's a war that may take 25 or 50 years. It's a war that we absolutely have to stay at. Only the United States can provide the leadership that the world requires to deal with this threat. If the U.S. doesn't do it there really isn't anybody else who can."

"The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq summoned news outlets to photograph her son's flag-draped casket arriving at Sacramento International Airport to protest a Pentagon policy banning media coverage of America's war dead