Quotes & Sayings About Baghdad

I wish that after the war against Saddam Hussein we had been more effective at rebuilding Iraq quickly. I think had we done it from the provinces, in, rather than from Baghdad, out, we might have been more successful. — Condoleezza Rice

By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions. — James Lovelock

Christians can no longer refer to 'our troops' or 'our history' because of their new identity. Fabricated boundaries and walls are removed for the Christian. One's neighbor is not only from Chicago but also from Baghdad. One's brother or sister in the church could be from Iran or California
no difference! Our family is transnational and borderless; we are in Iraq, and we are in Palestine. And if we are indeed to become born again, we will have to begin talking like it, changing the meaning of we, us, my, and our. — Shane Claiborne

I left Kurdistan in April 2003 with the peshmerga, following their excited advance as Saddam's forces crumbled. First Kirkuk, then Mosul - where looters broke into the city museum and seized its Parthian sculptures - then Tikrit. I reported from Baghdad in month-long stints until the end of 2004. — Luke Harding

That is why we wholeheartedly support the American-led effort to free the people of Iraq. And though we are a small country with a small military, we are proud to stand side by side with our allies in the fight to end the reign of terror in Baghdad. — Fatos Nano

Middle East by the Arab Muslim caliphate, ending with Muslim fragmentation and the Iranian Buyid capture of Abbasid Baghdad, saw Muslim and Maronite establishment in Mount Lebanon. — William Harris

The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May, and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year, he said, there were only about 25 car bombings in Baghdad. — Rich Lowry

In contrast, the 'Old Europe' channels were showing film from reporters who had embedded themselves at the wrong end of the Baghdad blitz and the Basra bombardment. These films depicted the shattered homes, the killed and grieving civilians and the infrastructure chaos our armed forces are creating daily. Since this footage (none of it bearing the al-Jazeera logo) clearly exists, why does the Western media studiously ignore it or, when confronted by it, claim it to be Iraqi propaganda. — David Walker

When I went back to Iraq again, after the liberation was complete, I was myself engaged on a sort of "dig", and I decided to travel with Paul Wolfowitz. It was in its own way an archaeological and anthropological expedition. Here are some of the things we unearthed or observed. Unnoticed by almost everybody, and unreported by most newspapers, Saddam Hussein's former chief physicist Dr. Mahdi Obeidi had waited until a few weeks after the fall of Baghdad to accost some American soldiers and invite them to excavate his back garden. There he showed them the components of a gas centrifuge
the crown jewels of uranium enrichment
along with a two-foot stack of blueprints. This burial had originally been ordered by Saddam's younger son Qusay, who had himself been in charge of the Ministry of Concealment, and had outlasted many visits by "inspectors". I myself rather doubt that Hans Blix would ever have found the trove on his own. — Christopher Hitchens

We know where they are [Iraq's weapons of mass destruction]. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. — Donald Rumsfeld

They do believe that if we do not wage this war against terror in places like Baghdad and Kabul, we are more likely to have it waged in Baltimore and Kansas. — Ed Gillespie

The Bush administration has now provided three case studies in arrogance, isolation and destructiveness: Michael Brown during Hurricane Katrina, Ambassador Jerry Bremer in Baghdad and Secretary Paulson at Treasury. It is a tragic and very expensive legacy. No conservative and no Republican should doubt how much it has hurt our cause and our party. — Newt Gingrich

It should be noted that no ethically -trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. — Nathaniel S. Borenstein

Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads. — Anonymous

Next time
we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren! — Leonard Leventon

Enclosed by a sand berm four miles around and 160 feet high, the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility entombs what remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. It has stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel. — Barton Gellman

In the age of the internet when everybody's a pundit, we're still gonna need somebody there to go talk to the colonels, to be on the ground in Baghdad and stuff and that's very expensive. — Walter Isaacson

The U.S. is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis. — Noam Chomsky

As William Bernstein describes in 'A Splendid Exchange', 'The Arabs, invigorated by their conquests, experienced a cultural renaissance that extended to many fields; the era's greatest literature, art, mathematics, and astronomy was not found in Rome, Constantinople, or Paris, but in Damascus, Baghdad and Cordova. — Christopher Lascelles

One hundred infidels committed suicide as they entered the holy city of Baghdad. Their tanks will become their tombs. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid. — Leonard Leventon

I think a lot it was the theology, that the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad, that somehow if we broke apart the rejectionist states, like Iraq, then the whole Middle East would reconfigure itself into a more favorable environment for democracy and Israel and us. — Chris Matthews

A troop surge in Baghdad would put more American troops at risk to address a problem that is not a military problem. — Norm Coleman

Are an Armenian," says the Turk with the handgun. "I am." "Where are you going?" "Damascus." "Why?" "My sister lives there." "What do you do?" "I'm an engineer. I'm working on the Baghdad Railway - the spur from Aleppo to Nusaybin." "The British have captured Nasiriyah." "I hadn't heard that." He nods. "Had you heard that an Armenian murdered a Turkish — Chris Bohjalian

Pedro Teixeira, the great Portuguese merchant-adventurer, wrote a beautiful description of a coffeehouse with windows overlooking the Tigris and the ruins of old Baghdad. That was in 1604, and he's visiting the same street that I write about in the book, named after Abu Nuwas, though it wasn't called that back then. — Annia Ciezadlo

Two people, one city, different times; connected by a memoir. Can love exist in a city destined for decades of misery? — Ahmad Ardalan

No one that has ever been in combat ever wants to see war anywhere in the world. It is horrible. It's horrible looking at the pock-marked walls. It's horrible looking at the flesh embedded on walls in Bosnia. It was horrible looking and interviewing and talking to the kids who lost their parents, because Saddam Hussein decided to feed their parents to the lions in downtown Baghdad. To characterize particularly myself, but other groups, as wanting to advocate a war I think is not only disingenuous, I think it's a patent falsehood intentionally created to stigmatize a group of people. — Matt Shea

Iran is also engaged in the fight against ISIL for reasons of its own that include a desire not to see a reasonably friendly government in Baghdad falling. But it also includes its desire not to have ISIL's ideology spread in the region where it lives — David Ignatius

He would have lied to himself as facilely as an alcoholic lies to himself to justify the 10 a.m. tumbler of vodka : it may be early here, but in Baghdad it's almost evening. — Peter Benchley

I want to sleep with people, steal, get run out of town, leave my fingerprints on every scene. We have a name for it, our generation. It's our Baghdad."
"Your what?"
"My Baghdad," Tommy said laughing, knowing it was dumb, savoring the dumbness, and maybe also its truth. "The situation you get into knowing it's fucked-up but you keep doing it anyway, making it an even bigger disaster. Everyone gets one, but that's how you learn. It builds character, makes you dirty and real. You know you're a superpower when you can lose every war and still be a superpower. Maybe you're a superpower because you can afford to lose them. Same here. There should be a Web site that records all the risks a person has taken, all the famous people they've met, all their gnarly trips and bad decisions. Like a Web site that ranks who's lived the most."
"Isn't that called Facebook?" Mills asked. — Christopher Bollen

The roots of ISIS do not lie in the actions America took in 2003. Bush made mistakes in Iraq, and left a ramshackle state that functioned less badly than any of its neighbors. Obama walked away, pulled out a cigarette, tossed the match over his shoulder, and ignited a fuse that, from Damascus to Baghdad to Amman and beyond, will blow up the entire Middle East. — Mark Steyn

There's an old saying, Zill. Freedom can't be given, only earned. — Brian K. Vaughan

They are most welcome. We will butcher them. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

I took a trip in 2004, a year after the war started in Iraq. I played music on the streets of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians. I'd also play for U.S. soldiers at night when they were off duty in the bars. Then I would talk to people, and I would film them and ask them about their life and the conflict. — Michael Franti

You can go and visit those places. Nothing there, nothing at all. There are Iraqi checkpoints. Everything is okay. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

It's so jarring to go from Baghdad to Cambridge, to go from a place where people are fighting and striving and dying to a place where the biggest concern is what kind of cheese to put in your sandwich. — Dexter Filkins

Their objective is to get to the outskirts of Baghdad. So be it — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

The feeling of being an Iraqi unites all ethnic groups within this country. Even the Kurds, who have traditionally pushed for their own state, see the benefits of the current situation. They enjoy an autonomous status in Kurdistan, while at the same time participating in decisions in Baghdad. But if neighboring states were to push for a partition of Iraq, it would be a horrible mistake. — Zalmay Khalilzad

How can you lay siege to a whole country? Who is really under siege now? Baghdad cannot be besieged. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. — George W. Bush

roughly identical with modern Iraq from north of Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. It has an area of approximately 10,000 square miles, somewhat larger than the state of Massachusetts. Its climate is extremely hot and dry, and — Samuel Noah Kramer

I think in a sense this is a house that was built on a bad foundation. And the foundation was the Americans coming here and allowing the sacking, burning and plunder of Baghdad, for whatever reason. — Jon Lee Anderson

Almost immediately, I remember right when Tikrit even fell, a few days after Baghdad fell, there was talks of insurgency, there was talks of jihad and of resisting the American occupiers, and slowly this turned into an organized movement. — Farnaz Fassihi

People don't dream all their lives of escaping the hellish countries they live in and pay their life savings to underworld types for the privilege of being locked up in a freezing, filthy, stinking container ship and hauled like cargo for weeks until they finally arrive in Moscow or Beijing or Baghdad or Kabul. People risk their lives to come here
to New York. The greatest city in the world, where dreams become reality. — Sean Hannity

Our military superiority is so great - it's far greater than it was in the Gulf War, and the Gulf War was over in 100 hours after we bombed for 43 days ... Now they can bomb for a couple of days and then just roll into Baghdad ... The odds are there's going to be a war and it's going to be not for very long. — William J. Clinton

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

I deeply regret to say that terrorism has become globalized: ' From New York to Mosul, from Damascus to Baghdad, from the Easternmost to the Westernmost parts of the world, from Al-Qaeda to Daesh'. The extremists of the world have found each other and have put out the call: 'extremists of the world unite'. But are we united against the extremists? — Hassan Rouhani

Today's message to Baghdad is very clear: the UN Security Council resolution expresses the unity and determination of the entire international community to assume its collective responsibility. — Javier Solana

There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. — John McCain

One last thing I remember which was like a portent of things to come. We had been having tea in Dr Jordan's house in Baghdad. He was a good pianist, and was sitting that day playing us Beethoven. He had a fine head, and I thought, looking at him, what a splendid man he was. He had seemed always gentle and considerate. Then there was a mention by someone, quite casually, of Jews. His face changed; changed in an extraordinary way that I had never noticed on anyone's face before. He said: 'You do not understand. Our Jews are perhaps different from yours. They are a danger. They should be exterminated. Nothing else will really do but that.' I stared at him unbelievingly. He meant it. It was the first time I had come across any hint of what was to come later — Agatha Christie

We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad. — Donald Rumsfeld

The fact is that as soon as they reach Baghdad gates, we will besiege them and slaughter them. Until now they have refused to do battle with us. They are just going places. One can describe them as a boa: when it feels threatened, it runs to somewhere else. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

Just show a little skin once in a while. You look like a member of a freaking Mormon cult or something. We live in Chicago, not Baghdad. — M.K. Schiller

They're not even within 100 miles of Baghdad. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion ... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

They are going to surrender or be burned in their tanks. They will surrender, it is they who will surrender. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

They [US soldiers] started to commit suicide on the Baghdad walls. We will encourage them to double their suicide attempts. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

My dad was working abroad, in Iraq, and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him, in Baghdad, off and on. For the first ten years of my life, we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad, so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East. — Andy Serkis

People of Baghdad, remember for 26 generations you have suffered under strange tyrants who have ever endeavoured to set one Arab house against another in order that they might profit by your dissensions. This policy is abhorrent to Great Britain and her Allies for there can be neither peace nor prosperity where there is enmity or misgovernment. Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. — Frederick Stanley Maude

If the U.N. secretary-general withdraws the inspectors from Baghdad ... this means that the secretary-general has abandoned its own responsibility in maintaining peace and security in the world. — Naji Sabri

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life. — Idries Shah

A point to remember. As any technology advances, its methods and equipment do not become more complex; they become simplified. (Take, for example, printed circuits, silicon chips.) Such equipment may not be recognizable to a civilization of inferior knowledge. The point is we may be looking at objects - quite exciting objects - without recognizing them. Who would have expected that items in Baghdad Museum, long labelled as "ritual objects," would prove to be components of batteries? Do you see what I mean? — Jonathan Gray

The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad ... Be assured, Baghdad is safe, protected. Iraqis are heroes. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

In winter darkness, the Baghdad Arabian keen blue deepness of the piercing lovely January winter's dusk
it used to tear my heart out, one stabbing soft star was in the middle of the magicalest blue, throbbing like love
I saw Maggie's black hair in this night
In the shelves of Orion her eye shades, borrowed, gleamed a dark and proud vellum somber power brooding rich bracelets of the moon rose from our snow, and surrounded the mystery. — Jack Kerouac

Could she really do it? Could she really go all that way by herself? Yes, she whispered, of course you can do it: you're thirty-eight years old and you're not going to the moon, just to Baghdad. The word sounded the way a shiver felt. At the dinner party in London it had been a shiver of excitement, but now it held a frisson of dread. She — Lindsay Jayne Ashford

We killed 6 innocent people, launching 22, I think $3 million apiece missiles on Baghdad ... that's a little bit overdoing it. — Bill Hicks

The American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies! — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

The solution to Iraq
an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself
is more than a military mission. Precisely the reason why I sent more troops into Baghdad. — George W. Bush

I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologize for it. — Peter Arnett

There is no presence of the American columns in the city of Baghdad at all. We besieged them and we killed most of them. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

This boa, the American columns, are being besieged between Basra and other towns north, west, south and west of Basra. The Americans are the people who are under siege. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs. — Jacques Chirac

It's always sort of amazing, sitting in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone. — Patrick Cockburn

I, along with our fourteen soldiers, set off into the urban wilderness of Baghdad. We had six humvees, lots of ammunition, over a million dollars worth of equipment, and no idea what the fuck we were going to do with it all. — Brandon Friedman

These poor kids in Baghdad have no running water, no showers. They wipe with baby wipes. My heart goes out to them. — Kid Rock

If feels good to live after death. It feels good to not be dead. It feels so good to find myself alive and flying home. The music plays in my ears and I float further and further away from war. Fucking Baghdad. — Michael Hastings

In the 10th century, Baghdad instituted a licensing exam that all doctors had to take before practicing as physicians — Firas Alkhateeb

Baghdad is altogether built of chrome-yellow kiln-dried bricks. — Isabella Bird

For the senior officers in Iraq, at least in 2005-2006, the responsibility was to the men at the top, the media, the message, the public back home - anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command. And that's the ultimate betrayal of Iraq, the one that disillusioned me in Baghdad and Nineveh and keeps me outraged today. — Luis Carlos Montalvan

If one's memories of Baghdad women were only of those to be seen in the streets, they would be of leathery, wrinkled faces, prematurely old, figures which have lost all shape, and henna-stained hands crinkled and deformed by toil. — Isabella Bird

Until now they have refused to do battle with us. They are just going places. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

There are people in Baghdad pursuing the initiative that I started, and I want to give them every chance of success. I don't want to provide any distractions. — Scott Ritter

This is a bigger deal than I thought. I'll get him out. Actually, I'll get him out first and then we'll go to Baghdad. I'll deal with the judge. — Justin Conboy

I think that we live in a remarkably networked world. The problem with that, of course, is that tensions can travel in nanoseconds across the Internet, and so the tensions between Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad, or between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast - those show up in different parts of the world. — Eboo Patel

The American surge of combat forces into Baghdad that was ordered by President Bush worked. And there was a calm, a relative calm that descended on the country kind of late 2008. That pretty much held until the last American combat soldiers left at the end of 2011. — Dexter Filkins

The Americans were understandably on hair triggers. There was a good reason for all of this security. For despite TV images of quick victory, much of Baghdad certainly had not fallen and firefights with die-hard Ba'athists loyal to Saddam Hussein were raging all over the city. — Lawrence Anthony

There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

Ever since the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Muslim world has been in slow decline relative to the west. With Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the creeping British annexation of Muslim India, that decline took on a malign aspect. — James Buchan

I had no idea what it would be like to be a bomb tech in Baghdad until I got there so I didn't know what to expect. It was very eye-opening. — Mark Boal

I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ... To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab
world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero. — George H. W. Bush

It is fascinating that Baghdad had more than 100 public libraries in the year 891, Cordoba had 70 public libraries at the end of 10th century, while the royal library of Caliph al-'Aziz, in the year 988, of the Fatimids in Cairo perhaps had more than 100,000 volumes collection arranged in classified order. — Balqis Suja'

It smelled like a slaughterhouse. I was standing in the interrogation room of Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. A stench of blood and death permeated my senses, my clothes, my being. — Bernard B. Kerik

The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then a one-room apartment above it. There's street after street after street of that stuff. — P. J. O'Rourke

If [President Obama] does not go on the offensive against ISIS ... they are coming here. This is just not about Baghdad, this is just not about Syria, this is about our homeland. And if we get attacked because he has no strategy to protect us, then he will have committed a blunder for the ages. — Lindsey Graham

How will the bombing of Baghdad, a city of five million, accomplish a regime change? — Susan Sarandon

When you give in to bullies, you don't just empower them, you encourage whatever methods they employ to achieve their ends; usually terror and violence. Meaning it's the innocent who pay; mourners at a funeral in Baghdad, a group of Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya, a group of defenseless school children in Pakistan. When we turn a blind eye to atrocities, we are complicit in them. — David Crossman

I considered myself very lucky after 'Baghdad Cafe,' and I have 'The Shield.' In every genre, I've kicked butt at some point. I'm real happy. — C. C. H. Pounder

I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places. — Zaha Hadid

So here's a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse, that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nassariyeh the latter a city which briefly rose in successful revolt against Saddam in 1991 why should Saddam's forces not keep fighting in Baghdad? — Robert Fisk

I wonder which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our
President's personal savior, would have personally
dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad? — Meryl Streep

I again flourished my papers: "Here're my credentials from the Coalition Administration."
The American scrutinized the papers, shook his head in amazement, and smiled. "A South African," he said. "You're sure a long way from home." He radioed through for instructions and indicated that I should bring my hired car up to the side of the roadblock and wait. — Lawrence Anthony