According to recent opinion polls, a large majority of Iraqis believe that the U.S. military has no intention to leave Iraq, and that it would stay even is asked by the Iraqi government to leave.
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.
If all goes well, the Iraqis are going to have a country that's going to have a representative government and will be at peace with its neighbors and in the region.
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.
I woke up and all I could see was Iraqis standing all around me, looking down upon me. I knew at that moment something terrible had happened and I wasn't in the right place.
I said in October of 2008 that there was no proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or had the intention or capability of attacking the United States. Here we are. Almost 4,700 troops died, tens of thousands injured, over a million Iraqis dead. It will cost $5 trillion in the end for the war.
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.
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.
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.
Second, recent polls over there show that the majority of Iraqis want us to leave precipitously.
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.
God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis.
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.
It's very unlikely that we're going to send more troops to Iraq. We are going to have to train the Iraqis faster and harder.
We must provide all kinds of freedom, personal and economic, to all Iraqis. I will fight for that.
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.
The Iraqis have once again failed to meet a deadline for a final draft of the constitution.
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.
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.
There is not a great sense that the Americans know what they are doing, or are making much progress in Iraq. And there is satisfaction in seeing that the Iraqis are successful in resisting the United States.
Iraqis must fight for their own country.
Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.
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.
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
Our own State Department polls say that 80 percent of Iraqis view the United States as an unpopular occupier.
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.
Iraqis have held elections and have recently put together their government, all encouraging developments.
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.
The Iraqis have become invested in their nationhood.
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.
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.
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.
What we have found is that we were the principal mediators in many cases between the Iraqis and their own security forces and their own government, and so you have to almost embrace that role.
A large majority of Americans believe that the U.N., not the U.S., should take the lead in working with Iraqis to transfer authentic sovereignty as well as in economic reconstruction and maintaining civic order.
There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.
One day I am at home, watching dramatic images of Iraqi Yazidis fleeing for their lives being aired nonstop on 24-hour news channels. Days later, I am there, staring at tens of thousands of displaced Iraqis and feeling a 35-millimeter frame cannot capture the scope of devastation and heartbreak before me.
