Quotes of the Morning: We Ain't Leavin' Til We're Heavin'

“Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki predicted it ‘will not be long’ before US troops can start withdrawing from his country but would not commit to a timetable.
Maliki said in an interview with CNN that Iraqi security forces were growing stronger alongside the 138,000 US troops still in Iraq nearly three and a half years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.”
-AFP, August 27, 2006

“Well that is good, but it doesn’t really matter. We aren’t leaving.”
-Skippy

"We're not leaving, so long as I'm the president.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, August 21, 2006

“And al-Maliki doesn’t really sound like he has all that good a grip on what is happening either..”
-Skippy

“Two dozen Iraqi soldiers were killed in fierce street fighting with Shi'ite militiamen in the city of Diwaniya on Monday in some of the bloodiest clashes yet among rival factions in Shi'ite southernIraq.
Thirty seven people were killed, according to army, militia and medical sources. Five soldiers were posted missing in a battle officials said began late on Sunday when troops tried to detain men of the Mehdi Army militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed 13 policemen and wounded 62 other people outside the Interior Ministry, police said, in one of the deadliest attacks in the city since U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a big security clampdown three weeks ago.
Seven U.S. soldiers were among more than 60 people killed on Sunday in violence that challenged assertions by Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that his forces had the upper hand in violence that many fear could turn into all-out civil war.”
-Reuters, August 28, 2006

“A suicide car bomber struck at the nerve centre of Iraq's embattled security forces, killing 14 people and injuring 45 more in an attack on the interior ministry.
The attack came as Interior Minister Jawad Bolani was due to hold a meeting with police chiefs, and capped off a torrid 24 hours of carnage in which more than 60 Iraqis and five American soldiers had already been killed.
A security official told AFP that eight police commandos were among those killed when the bomber detonated his cargo of explosives near a checkpoint outside the ministry's tightly-guarded compound in downtown Baghdad.”
-AFP, August 28, 2006

“A spate of car bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 55 people on Sunday, but Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said violence was on the decrease and that the country would never slide into a civil war.
A top government official said Maliki planned to reshuffle his coalition cabinet just 100 days after it was formed because he wanted to root out disloyal or poorly performing ministers and rally factions behind his national reconciliation plan.”
-Reuters, August 28, 2006

“But we have to fight the War on Terror in Iraq so that we don’t have to fight it here. After all, remember what Osama did to us on 9/11?”
-Skippy

“Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a longtime and prominent member of the FBI's ‘Ten Most Wanted’ list, which notes his role as the suspected mastermind of the deadly U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998.
But another more infamous date -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- is nowhere to be found on the same FBI notice.
“The curious omission underscores the Justice Department's decision, so far, to not seek formal criminal charges against bin Laden for approving al-Qaeda's most notorious and successful terrorist attack. The notice says bin Laden is ‘a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world’ but does not provide details.
The absence has also provided fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings. From this point of view, the lack of a Sept. 11 reference suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain.”
-Washington Post, August 27, 2006

“Apparently the government doesn’t remember either. Rest safe America in the knowledge that Fearless Leader will protect you, even if he doesn't know what from.”
-Skippy