George Casey Quotes

"Fighting insurgencies is a long-term proposition, and there's no reason that we should believe that the insurgency in Iraq will take any less time to deal with."

"I think that's entirely possible, senator, ... I mean, as we've looked at this, we've looked for the constitution to be a national compact, and the perception now is that it's not, particularly among the Sunni."

"Now this constitution has come out, and it didn't come out as the national compact that we thought it was going to be. And there's division there, ... And that caused the situation to change a little bit."

"We've looked for the constitution to be a national pact, and the perception now is that it's not."

"Army ... in bad shape"

"do everything in their power to try to stop the march of freedom. And our troops are ready for it."

"The Iraqis are seeing that they need to take a stand against the foreign fighters and the Iraqis that support them so they can get on with their future,"

"reducing the visibility and ultimately the presence of coalition forces as we transition to Iraqi security self-reliance remains a key element of our counter-insurgency strategy."

"The development of the Iraqi security forces is very much on track,"

"[The training of Iraqi security forces is] very much on track, ... This Week."

"Increased coalition presence feeds the notion of occupation. It contributes to the dependency of Iraqi security forces on the coalition, ... It extends the amount of time that it will take for Iraqi security forces to become self-reliant. And it exposes more coalition forces to attacks."

"They were involved in about a monthlong planning cycle with us. And they were well-integrated with us. ... I've heard nothing but positive things about how they performed,"