Jerry Costello Quotes

Romania will continue to fulfil its obligations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We are succeeding in Iraq. It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding.

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

To leave Afghanistan as a playground for terrorists and adventurers was simply not possible anymore.

Listen, we’re making good progress in Iraq. Sometimes its hard to tell it when you listen to the filter.

By the time the United States went to war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, I had made three trips to the country. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and have been returning routinely for the past 14 years.

We came to Iraq to liberate them and to make our world a safer place.

I think all of us who have been in Afghanistan on the ground multiple times know that what we're doing there on the ground is just not sustainable.

Well, I've been to Iraq twice now. I was in Baghdad in June and then north of Baghdad in November.

You gotta love the names. They're so eager, earnest, and hopeful: Camp Prosperity, Camp Liberty, and Camp Victory are the names of just a few of the U.S. military bases in Baghdad.

I have been to Iraq on a number of occasions. I was with the first group that went in.

The U.S. and Britain are incapable of controlling all of Iraq.

Perhaps we underestimated the challenges in Afghanistan in the past. That's why we are now strengthening and intensifying our commitment.

I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place

We have to go in and win this war quickly, and then be prepared to help stabilize Iraq over an indefinite period, five to ten years, at a minimum, I believe, using a large fraction of American forces. This is a major undertaking that likely would require a total of 150,000 troops and could stay above 100,000 for several years

I would hope that we have in place the adequate resources to become an army of occupation because you’re going to walk into chaos

Necessary to keep Iraqi army intact for a specified period of time. Serves as a ready resource pool for labor-intensive civil works projects

We’re not going to need as many people to do peacekeeping as we needed to fight the war.

I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.

Whether you think we belong in Iraq or not, we can’t tune it out.

We cannot lose Afghanistan

I spent several months patrolling Al Dora district in Baghdad in 2006 with the 101st Airborne. It's a tough neighborhood. There's a lot of militias operating there, including a lot of Shiite militias, which are backed by Iran.

We don't have enough American troops inside of Iraq to destroy ISIL any time soon.

We've been at war for many years in Afghanistan following 9/11. We know that we've got young men and women on the ground now. We've got our blood and treasure at stake there already.

The war in Iraq was unwinnable.