John Abizaid
John Abizaid
John Philip Abizaidis a retired United States Army general and former U.S. Central Commandcommander, overseeing American military operations in a 27-country region, from the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, to South and Central Asia, covering much of the Middle East. CENTCOM oversees 250,000 US troops. Abizaid succeeded General Tommy Franks as Commander, USCENTCOM, on July 7, 2003, and was also elevated to the rank of four-star general the same week. He was succeeded by Admiral William J. Fallon on...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSoldier
Date of Birth1 April 1951
CountryUnited States of America
In terms of overall strength of the insurgency, I would say it is the same as it was,
And clearly we know that the vast majority of the insurgents are from the Sunni Arab community.
The way we need to deal with them is to be offensive -- to find them and to attack them and also to ensure that we pay attention to what's moving along the Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi borders in particular,
The international community needs to continue to help and you can certainly count on the United States to continue to help as well,
Now, people will say, 'Well, that's a very small number,' but when you understand that they're organized in cellular structure, that they have a brutal and determined cadre, that they know how to operate covertly, they have access to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you'll understand how dangerous they are,
Tell them we are winning, ... You don't define success as the absence of hard losses. You define it - are you defeating the enemy?
It makes sense that as NATO forces go in, and they're more in numbers, that we could drop some of the U.S. requirements somewhat,
Clearly, we understand that we've got an enemy that's in for the long term, al-Qaida and the associated groups that are aligned with it, ... We know that they've got a long-term strategy to fight, to gain ground, to gain influence. And it's very very clear that we've got to have the same sort of long term strategy to contest it. But the keystone to this strategy is helping the people in the region help themselves.
And the answer is it is, but it's also a difficult road to go on. There are peaks and valleys that you go through, but overall, the trend is good. We're certainly confident. And the most important thing we're confident about is that the Iraqis want to do this. They want to take the fight. They will take the fight.
The weather was bad. We don't know of any enemy action. The investigation continues,
I think we will need more troops then we currently have to secure the elections process in Iraq -- that will probably take place in January -- but it is our belief that those troops will be Iraqi troops and there may be additional international troops that arrive to help out, as well as part of the U.N. mission. So I don't see need for more American troops, but we can't discount it.
I believe, with the addition of those additional Iraqi forces, with the gelling of the Iraqi chain of command, with good leadership by Prime Minister Allawi and his ministers, that the elections will be able to be held,
there's actually some indication, based on intelligence information that we have, that ammo is starting to be difficult for them to obtain in certain areas.
What I've asked for is essentially to have a strong mobile combat arms capability, ... That's probably about two brigades worth of combat power, if not more.