#iraq

To my surprise, it was a place where my thoughts were the most lucid. I wasn’t bogged down in random trivial details or the luxury of time-consuming over-analysis. This place forced you to live because at any moment, life could be lost. Ramadi forced me to die unto myself. ↗

— M.B. Wilmot

#iraq #iraq-war #overanalysis #ramadi #triviality

September 11, 2001: Citizens of the U.S., besieged by terror’s sting, rose up, weeping glory, as if on eagles’ wings.--from the poem Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001 ↗

— Aberjhani

#angels #iraq-war #peace-movement #september- #dreams

When we neared the orchard a flock of birds lit from its outer rows. They hadn't been there long. The branches shook with their absent weight and the birds circled above in the riddy mackerel sky, where they made an artless semaphore. I was afraid, I smelled copper and cheap wine. The sun was up, but a half-moon hung low on the opposite horizon, cutting through the morning sky like a figure from a child's pull-tab book. We were lined along the ditch up to our ankles in a soupy muck. It all seemed in that moment to be the conclusion of a poorly designed experiment in inevitability. Everything was in its proper place, waiting for a pause in time, for the source of all momentum to be stilled, so that what remained would be nothing more than detritus to be tallied up. The world was paper-thin as far as I could tell. And the world was the orchard, and the orchard was what came next. But none of that was true. I was only afraid of dying. ↗

— Kevin Powers

#fighting #iraq-war #terror #war #design

The timing of this sudden interest in the plight of Iraqi women cannot be overemphasized. For decades, many Iraqi women activists in the US and UK had tried to raise awareness about the systematic abuse of human and women's rights under Saddam Hussein, the atrocities linked to the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, and the impact of economic sanctions on women and families. . . . 'We wrote so many letters and we organized many events. . . . They did not want to know. They were just not interested. It was only in the run-up to the [2003] invasion that the governments started to care about the suffering of Iraqi women. ↗

— Nadje Al-Ali

#iraq #state #uk #us #women

Insurgents throughout Iraq continue to threaten our efforts and pose a danger to stability in the region. They fight not for their country, but rather against ours. ↗

— Paul Gillmor

#continue #country #danger #efforts #fight

The bottom line is that after we defeat the armed forces of Iraq, that we will want to and need to provide stability throughout that country. ↗

— Peter Pace

#armed #armed forces #bottom #bottom line #country

What I see as the greatest threat to America is that the American people will put political pressure on their leaders to pull out of Iraq before we should. ↗

— Thelma Drake

#american #american people #before #greatest #greatest threat

Many Sunnis, who are still stuck in the Saddam era mindset and believe Iraq belongs to them, are trying to prevent a new country from developing at all. ↗

— Brent Scowcroft

#belongs #country #developing #era #iraq

There aren't traditions of freedom in a place like Iraq. They're going to have to come to grips with a concept that they hadn't been allowed to conceive before. ↗

— Malcolm Wallop

#been #before #come #conceive #concept

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help. ↗

— Peter Schuyler

#asking #before #during #first #first phase