Quotes of the Morning: Iraq Was Asking For It

“From troops on the ground to members of Congress, Americans increasingly blame the continuing violence and destruction in Iraq on the people most affected by it: the Iraqis.”
-Washington Post, November 28, 2006

“Yep. There wouldn’t be any civil war currently raging in Iraq if they would just stop fighting a civil war. I mean, heck, we expected them to behave like civilized adults.”
-Skippy

"I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators. ... The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."
-Dick Chaney, March 16, 2003

“You see? It is all their fault for not greeting us like liberators when we invaded their country. If they had just smiled and turned the other cheek when we took down their government there wouldn’t be all of these problems. No one knew that the occupation would be required or that this would make Iraq into a bitterly hostile place to be.”
-Skippy

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.”
-President George Herbert Walker Bush, A World Transformed, 1998

“Well, no one except Fearless Leader’s father. He was on top of it. It isn’t our fault that they didn’t like us. We tried to make friends.”
-Skippy

“Farmer Shahab, 41, stood amid the rubble of the former home of 55-year-old farmer Omar Khalil, who was arrested shortly before the home was destroyed. The military said Khalil's son, who escaped, was one of the suspects in the downing of the Black Hawk.
Khalil's wife, Kafey, sat wailing near her wrecked house. "I have no son. I have no husband. I have no home. I will be a beggar."
Kafey Khalil said military officials first visited the house two days ago, demanding that her husband turn in her son. He refused. Then about 10 p.m. Sunday, the military returned, she said.
‘They started shouting at us: 'Get up! Get out!' ‘ she said. ‘They brought a big truck for us. It was so cold we felt like we were dying. After five minutes they started shooting. We didn't have time to get anything but blankets. They brought in the tanks and the helicopters and started bombing.’”
-Philadelphia Enquirer, November 12, 2003

“A new report by US pressure group Human Rights Watch says American forces in Iraq continued to torture and abuse detainees after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004.
The report flies in the face of claims by the US Defense Department that abuse of detainees was the work of a few bad apples acting on their own initiative.
Human Rights Watch senior researcher John Sifton says the findings are the result of direct testimony from three former US soldiers about prisoners in American custody in Iraq between 2003 and 2005.
‘The soldiers described detainees being routinely subjected to beatings, painful stress positions, severe sleep depravation, exposure to extreme cold and hot temperatures, very serious abuses,’ he said.
‘And it shows that abuses in Iraq were not isolated events by independent actors but rather, they were routine and authorized.’"
-ABC News Online, July 23, 2006

“The Army is investigating complaints that soldiers posted photographs of Iraqi corpses on an Internet site in exchange for access to pornographic images on the site, officials said Tuesday.”
-Associated Press, September 27, 2005

“The Iraqi people just didn’t understand our peaceful and well-meaning ways. Now this is all their fault.”
-Skippy

“Five young girls were among six Iraqis killed by US forces yesterday after troops used tanks and machine guns to attack what they said was a house occupied by insurgents.”
-Belfast Telegraph, November 29, 2006

“We didn’t want to do that, but they forced us to. Now Iraq should go to the kitchen, make dinner and give us a *&%@# beer like we asked the first time.”
-Skippy

“What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing. You’ve told her twice already.”
-Unknown Sexist Pig