Quotes About Iraqis

#1. As Turkish entrepreneurs perform well in Iraq, the Iraqis will have more confidence in Turkish contractors than in some European company they do not know.

Husnu Ozyegin

#2. Saddam Hussein has been brutal against his people, but when he was committing those crimes, the international community did not come to the rescue of the Iraqis.

Bianca Jagger

#3. There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.

Lawrence Korb

#4. What the UN inspectors can do is demonstrate to the world, help the Iraqi government demonstrate to the world that the Iraqis are cooperatively disarming if that is in fact what the Iraqi government decides to do.

Douglas Feith

#5. We need to get our sons and daughters home and their responsibility for the security of Iraq needs to be assumed by Iraqis who will stand up and toe the line for their countries.

Jay Inslee

#6. The fact is that America's weapons systems have made it impossible for anybody to confront it militarily. So, all you have is your wits and your cunning, and your ability to fight in the way the Iraqis are fighting.

Arundhati Roy

#7. The U.S. and Iraq will work together next year to shift Iraqi resources from unproductive subsidies to productive uses that enable Iraqis to earn livelihoods.

Zalmay Khalilzad

#8. It seems to me that the Iraqis laid down a lot of the arms that we gave to them. So that doesn't seem to be the solution.

Brad Wenstrup

#9. The war between the Iranians and Iraqis is a touchy issue. To be quite honest, they each other's guts. It was not responsible to let one of our ships be put into a war zone like that.

Sam Nunn

#10. The Iraqis have a country that inherited cultures thousands of years old while the Americans have a culture only two hundred years old. Two hundred years will teach thousands of years!? Oh Americans, leave Iraq for its people.

Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

#11. The United States encouraged Iraqis to rise up after Saddam Hussein's army was driven out of Kuwait. Washington assumed Saddam was weak after losing the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqis rose up, but Saddam's troops killed thousands - Iraqis say tens of thousands - in a counter-offensive.

Richard Engel

#12. The obvious objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces.

Richard Dawkins

#13. The people in the southern provinces have no interest whatsoever to see British forces leave because they're providing security, stability, structure, and relations have always been good ... really between the British forces and the local Iraqis in this area,

Hoshyar Zebari

#14. If we are lucky, and George W. Bush is right, we are about to witness the War of the Happy Iraqis.

Howard Fineman

#15. I voted 'yes' and I urge all Iraqis, no matter their different ethnicities and religions ... to vote 'yes' to the constitution

Jalal Talabani

#16. It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis.

Scott Ritter

#17. Well, first of all, I have to say that Iraq has already used weapons of mass destruction against her own people and against Iranians during their long war, so we know that weapons of mass destruction are existent with the Iraqis.

Richard Armitage

#18. George W.Bush can go and kill thousands of Iraqis every day. By making people believe they are the enemy, and not human beings any more. If evil has an address, a nationality, you can exterminate all of them. This is fascism.

Marjane Satrapi

#19. Unlike the Afghans and Iraqis, the South Korean people solidly supported the American military presence, which was part of a United Nations operation.

John Eisenhower

#20. In the calculus of western interests, there is no suffering, whatever its scale, which cannot be justified. Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis are of little importance.

Tariq Ali

#21. President Bush threw out the first pitch Monday at Cincinnati's great American ball park. 18 Iraqis were killed.

Amy Poehler

#22. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

George W. Bush

#23. I had a hope that the Iraqis would embrace a new government, would establish a new Iraq very quickly, and, but I never had that as an expectation.

Tommy Franks

#24. In addition to a timeline, I have proposed that U.S. troops be removed from front line combat positions in Iraqi cities and towns, turning over daily security patrols, interactions with citizens, and any offensive security actions to the Iraqis themselves.

Peter DeFazio

#25. Iraq has not been disarmed 100 percent [but] in terms of what they [Iraqis] have accomplished there are no meaningful weapons or weapons production capability in Iraq today.

Scott Ritter

#26. The people of Iraq realize that a stable, successful, democratic Iraq can only come about if average Iraqis are willing to sacrifice to build it.

John Ensign

#27. Allowing the U.N. into Iraq will demonstrate to the Iraqis that the international community as a whole is committed to bringing stability and safety to their country.

Jay Rockefeller

#28. This is so like the way the Americans deliberately erroneously refer to Afghans and Iraqis as terrorists when they fight back killing American soldiers to protect their young from the illegal American invasion.

Bob Barker

#29. I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.

Hans Blix

#30. We need to make a distinction between misled Iraqis, those who believe that they are carrying weapons to liberate Iraq from what they call occupation, and criminal gangs that came from outside and wants to wage a deadly war on the Iraqi people, killing women and children in mosques and churches.

Jalal Talabani

#31. The face of terrorism in Iraq is dead. Abu Musab al Zarqawi brutalized, tortured, and killed thousands of innocent people, forcing Iraqis to live in fear. The Iraqi people finally had enough, and gave up his whereabouts to the Iraqi security forces.

Tim Murphy

#32. On Jan. 30, millions of Iraqis will cast ballots in the country's first fair and free election in decades, marking continued progress in Iraq's transition toward a country built on the pillars of democracy and freedom for all.

Jim Gerlach

#33. The president [Barack Obama] is not willing to send in apaches and spotters if the Iraqis say they don't want them and if it means that these Shia mobilization forces are going to be going after and trying to kill Americans.

Adam Schiff

#34. One of the most ignored dimensions of the Iraqi insurgency are the Iraqis themselves who are regularly abducted, held for ransom and sometimes executed.

Bruce Hoffman

#35. The U.S. is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis.

Noam Chomsky

#36. Why would we expect the French to fight to liberate the Iraqis when they wouldn't fight to liberate themselves?

Rush Limbaugh

#37. The Americans have always been better than the Iraqis at the leaflets. Early on in the first Gulf War, Iraqi PsyOps dropped a batch of their own leaflets on US troops, designed to be psychologically devastating. They read, 'Your wives are back at home having sex with Bart Simpson and Burt Reynolds.

Jon Ronson

#38. While it may take generations of nurturing, nations founded on and grounded in freedom will eventually overcome and prosper. Once free, folks rarely accept anything less, and that includes Iraqis.

Trent Lott

#39. We as Iraqis have suffered enormously as a result of al-Qaeda and its leader.

Hoshyar Zebari

#40. If the Iraqis fail to implement the reforms, if they fail to get a handle on the violence, there's nothing the United States can do, militarily or otherwise, that can solve those problems. They have to assume the primary responsibility to govern themselves.

Leon Panetta

#41. Young Shia who have been brought up with nothing, who are pretty anarchic, pretty dangerous. In 2004 when they came close to killing me, and of course they have killed very large numbers of other Iraqis. That's a major source of strength for Muqtada.

Patrick Cockburn

#42. The men and women of our armed forces played an instrumental role in the election process - securing polling sites and providing security - that allowed so many Iraqis the opportunity to vote freely for the first time ever.

John M. McHugh

#43. The good news from the U.S. military survey of focus groups is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors are contained within the supreme international crime committed by the invaders.

Noam Chomsky

#44. If one does not wish to take the word of journalists, human rights groups, and the United Nations that Iraq conducted a deliberate campaign to eradicate the Kurdish population, there's always the word of the Iraqis themselves.

Timothy Noah

#45. Every year, millions of people from Iran and Iraq travel to each other's countries, and we also have marriages between Iraqis and Iranians. Many Iranians were born in Iraq, and many Iraqis were born in Iran. This is a kind of special, cordial amicable ties.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

#46. As we continue to fight the war on terror, we express our gratitude to our troops whose valor over the last three years provided freedom to the Iraqis, while protecting our liberty here at home.

Tim Murphy

#47. We don't kill Iraqis - our hands do not kill Iraqis. But we target only the occupier with all the means of resistance.

Muqtada Al Sadr

#48. Iraqis have held elections and have recently put together their government, all encouraging developments.

James A. Leach

#49. I saw Kuwait many times before the war. I remember it as a beautiful place, full of very nice people, and it's a tragedy to see that somebody could set out to deliberately destroy a country the way the Iraqis have.

Norman Schwarzkopf

#50. Yet the march toward freedom is not without its hazards or its casualties and the threats of violence aimed at Iraqis who participate in the election will be dealt with accordingly.

Jim Gerlach

#51. Keep in mind that the Iraqis are not telling us anything we don't already know or can't prove. This is what makes this whole inspection process and all the rigmarole surrounding it a total farce.

Rush Limbaugh

#52. The Iraqis have once again failed to meet a deadline for a final draft of the constitution.

Matt Lauer

#53. Almost all Iraqis with any previous experience in the intelligence business are Sunni Arab, increasing the risk of penetration of the new intelligence apparatus by the insurgency.

Wayne White

#54. But as we move from this period of what many Iraqis regard as perceived occupation, we need to move towards one of partnership.

John Abizaid

#55. There is no doubt that Iraqis, like Australians and Americans, love and desire freedom. However, if freedom doesn't mean the right to complete self-determination, unfettered by interests other than one's own, then that freedom is less than worthless - it's oppression.

Amir Butler

#56. We need to make it clear that we will withdraw from Iraq within 6 to 9 months - so that the Iraqis will know that they must stand up and defend the opportunity given to them.

John Olver

#57. I don't think that the United States has the bulk of the responsibility. I really put that on [Bashar] Assad and on the Iraqis and on the region itself.

Hillary Clinton

#58. Iraqis don't trust one another, parties and ministries are run by sects and not by functionaries.

Lawrence Kaplan

#59. At the same time I think it is absolutely necessary that there be no confusion, no misunderstanding that if the Iraqis.. do not comply, then there will be consequences and those consequences will involve the use of military force to disarm them through changing the regime.

Colin Powell

#60. We have exhausted all of our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that ... we have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily.

Tom Daschle

#61. Just two weeks ago, millions of Iraqis defied the threats of terrorists and went to the polls to determine their own future. I congratulate the Iraqi people for the courage they've shown in making these elections so successful.

Bill Frist

#62. North Americans do not understand that you do not throw down human rights like bombs on the Iraqis.

Shirin Ebadi

#63. While it's very hard to know exactly how to measure public opinion there, because there's no really good polling, the fact of the matter is that in all the polls I've seen the vast majority of the Iraqis prefer to be free and are pleased that the coalition freed them.

Paul Bremer

#64. President Bush says now he is sticking to his plan for handing over power to the Iraqis on June 30. It's also part of his plan to hand over power to John Kerry on January 20.

David Letterman

#65. Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

Alain De Botton

#66. It could safely be said that Iraqis are dying at a faster clip since the American-led invasion and occupation than they did during the last decade of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Graydon Carter

#67. It's true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were in the wrong.

Hans Blix

#68. The time frame is very small to disarm the militia, to bring about a security situation in which the governing council, the 24 Iraqis or however many others they appoint, can govern the country.

Richard Lugar

#69. I think if we have a policy of zero violence, it won't be met, but the policy of getting the Iraqis in the fight and marginalizing those who are trying to stir up trouble will be effective.

George W. Bush

#70. The act of voting by ordinary Iraqis in the face of extreme danger confirms President Bush's belief that people around the globe, when given a chance, will choose liberty and democracy over enslavement and tyranny.

John Ensign

#71. The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.

Victor Davis Hanson

#72. We are ready to sacrifice our souls, our children and our families so as not to give up Iraq. We say this so no one will think that America is capable of breaking the will of the Iraqis with its weapons.

Saddam Hussein

#73. From watching the news one would think the Iraqis want us out of their country. But an overwhelming majority of Iraqis support our involvement there. Our freedom is contagious and we helped liberate them.

Jim Bunning

#74. America did not invade Iraq because Iraqis are Muslims. Oil, money, economic interests. Who knows? But it was not because Iraqis are Muslims.

Maajid Nawaz

#75. It's harder and harder for journalists to get out in the field and interview Iraqis. The Web can get these voices out easily and cheaply.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#76. A lot of these people are Iraqis fighting for control of their own government. Maybe there's an argument to make that outside forces that go in and start bombing that country or invading that country are actually terrorists more so than the people in the country.

Glenn Greenwald

#77. All Iraqis can unite to defeat terrorism and can unite to rebuild the country.

Ahmed Chalabi

#78. We were told this war would be over in a matter of weeks, and that the Iraqis would be able to finance it with oil sales. We were promised it was not a mission of nation building.

Sherrod Brown

#79. I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.

Rosanne Cash

#80. If we want to build the Iraqis' confidence about our intentions in their country, if we want to stop adding fuel to the fire of insurgency and terrorism, we must clarify our intent.

John Conyers

#81. We remember the specter of sectarian violence
al Qaeda's attacks on mosques and pilgrims, militias that carried out campaigns of intimidation and campaigns of assassination. And in the face of ancient divisions, you stood firm to help those Iraqis who put their faith in the future.

Barack Obama

#82. What you could say, and what I do argue in the book, is that he doesn't have as much concern for the lives of Iraqis as he does for the lives of Americans, or even frozen American embryos.

Peter Singer

#83. I think the American people have been surprised by the enthusiasm with which the Iraqis have taken to elections and politics.

Duncan Hunter

#84. We [US government] have no fundamental disagreement with the Saudis - I mean, excuse me, with the Iraqis any more than we do with the Arab League, which we happen to support the position they're taking.

Joe Biden

#85. After the bombing, most Iraqis saw what the perpetuators of this attack were trying to do.

George W. Bush

#86. Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take ALL of Kuwait .

April Glaspie

#87. Well, Mr. Speaker, if so many of these Iraqis are ready to come up and to provide the security, the police work in the country, then surely there should be no problem with putting American forces into the background instead of having them up front.

Marty Meehan

#88. We must acknowledge that for scores of years the Iraqis have offered martyrs and victims but have not been able to change the regime.

Jalal Talabani

#89. It looks like President Bush will be handing over power to the Iraqis by June 30th. That's amazing and not only that, but it looks like he'll be handing over power to the Democrats by November 2nd.

David Letterman

#90. I want the Iraqis to understand that we are with them and that they have to make tough decisions, and we'll help them make those tough decisions for this country, for this democracy to survive. And they've made some tough decisions.

George W. Bush

#91. We've killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war - mostly by blocking humanitarian aid.

Woody Harrelson

#92. If we invade Iraq and the regime is very close to falling, I'm very, very concerned that the Iraqis will, in fact, use weapons of mass destruction.

Norman Schwarzkopf

#93. coming from the Iraqis, who were trying

Chris Kyle

#94. The Iraqis had paid a terrible price for Saddam's folly (in the Gulf War). But looking at the devastation they left behind (in Kuwait), my sympathy was limited.

Margaret Thatcher

#95. Our own State Department polls say that 80 percent of Iraqis view the United States as an unpopular occupier.

Marty Meehan

#96. The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win.

Michael Moore

#97. You will triumph, O Iraqis, and with you the sons of your Arab nation

Saddam Hussein

#98. I read this morning that he's [Saddam Hussein] also said the love that the Iraqis have for him is so much greater than anything Americans feel for their President because he's been loved for 35 years, he says, the whole 35 years.

Diane Sawyer

#99. As I've said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis' future.

Barack Obama

#100. The liberation of Iraq, which is already hard to justify from the perspective of American interests, at least had the virtue of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Despite all the anarchy and violence, life has gotten better for most Iraqis.

Timothy Noah