Baghdad Quotes

I support the troops. This is tough time right now. I think a lot of people in our industry are afraid to speak out. I had a drink with Sean Penn the other night. He went over to Baghdad in December just to see for himself what was going on. And that guy is as American as anybody I ever met.

- Bill Paxton

Yesterday, the Pentagon warned U.S. reporters that they should get out of Baghdad as soon as possible because the U.S. could attack at any time. Then the Pentagon added, `Whatever you do, don`t tell Geraldo.`

- Conan O'Brien

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

- Gary Sinise

You think about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died and all the soldiers who have come back wounded and maimed. You read the paper and four more soldiers last week died and mercenaries have killed 27 people in Baghdad, mercenaries who are getting money from our tax dollars that should be going to protect the troops, and I`m depressed about the Cubs game. There`s a disconnect there. My point in all seriousness is that it`s such an abstraction, and this government has asked us to sacrifice nothing for this. The troops are sacrificing everything. It just seems like an obscenity.

- John Cusack

Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know, what did Iraq do to us?

- Susan Sarandon

You can`t just drop the 82nd Airborne into Baghdad and it will all be over.

- Chuck Hagel

There was one main road ... packed for weeks, bumper-to-bumper... with U.S. convoys ... pushing toward Baghdad,

- David Perkins

I know what it`s like to experience shock and awe. I know what it`s like to have somebody killed when something comes out of the sky and kills them, and that`s what we are about to do to the people in Baghdad.

- Kelly Campbell

You don`t have to go to Baghdad, but you can be in Florida and be a part of what that story is all about.

- Jenny Thompson

We believe that is our job to give readers what, not only what they need, but what they want. And it is our best hope that we can create a community conversation. Without community conversation, we`re Baghdad. And we`re very much in favor of the future of democracy.

- Ellen Foley

(The war in the streets of Baghdad gave rise to the deaths of thousands in New Orleans and to the destruction of the city. In both cases peoples of color are regarded'”and being dealt with'”as America`s enemy.) This place is going to look like Little Somalia, ... We`re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.

- Gary Jones

They said Saddam had the electricity in Baghdad back on two months after the first Iraq War. It`d been two years after the start of the war when I was there, and the greatest nation on Earth couldn`t even keep the lights on. It`s understandable they`re upset.

- John Crawford

Baghdad stinks. There`s constant water in the street. There`s no one to pick up the trash, so it all piles up outside. ... All the American toilet paper was clogging the Baghdad sewer system. It wasn`t built to take it, so there`s backed-up water everywhere and kids playing in it. Baghdad is just a dirty place.

- John Crawford

Baghdad is determined to force the Mongols of our age to commit suicide at its gates.

- Saddam Hussein

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

lies a distance even greater than the 8,000 miles from Washington to Baghdad.

- George Packer

Today a taboo has been broken. We are the moderates. Bush and Blair are the extremists. The danger for all of us is not in Baghdad but in Washington.

- John Pilger

If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore.

- Alan Burton

The mission statement was ordered, and it sent the 800th MP Brigade, effective the first of July, up to Baghdad. I joined my brigade to take command at the end of June.

- Ali Allawi

Shortly after we arrived in Baghdad, we had another conversation with the ambassador. He said that he wanted us to give him the timeline, because we had 90 days to get these prisons operational and transfer responsibility back to the Iraqis.

- Ali Allawi

Meanwhile, Coalition headquarters needed more military police support up in Baghdad and to run prison operations in Iraq. A phone call was made to the commander in Kuwait: Don`t let the 800th MP Brigade go home.

- Ali Allawi

But all that having been said, you can`t, in a city of a million people like Karbala, or 5 million like Baghdad, you can`t be in all places at all times.

- Alice Stone Blackwell

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.

- Amy Swiderski

The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea what liberation means.

- Andale Gross

But our issues and our focus should not just be on Baghdad but on the issues that moms and dads across America are truly concerned about every single day.

- Ann DeGroot

I`m sick of doing stories that make me want to drink myself into a stupor, ... We want stories to reflect the daily life for people in Baghdad '“ unfortunately, it's a terrible existence.

- Anthony Morrow

At times it is hard to ignore the comparisons between Baghdad (where I was less than a month ago and have spent more of the last two years) and New Orleans: The anarchy, the looting, some of it purely for survival, some of it purely opportunistic. We watched a flatbed truck drive by, a man on the back with an M-16 looking up on the roofs for snipers, as is common in Iraq. Private security contractors were stationed outside the Royal St. Charles Hotel; when asked if things were getting pretty wild around the area, one of them replied, '˜Nope. It`s pretty Green Zone here.`

- Anthony Morrow

It is not safe to be in Baghdad, it is patently unsafe and that`s true for whatever political persuasion you are. They will kill you if you are Republican, they will kill you if you are Democrat,

- Anthony Morrow

The men here say there was a progression. First, they became afraid to travel to Baghdad for work, which took them through largely Sunni suburbs on the west side of the city, where people were frequently attacked on the road.

- Anthony Morrow

Bob and his Marine division are on their way to Baghdad. The kids can see Dad on TV, though letting them watch his reports is hard.

- Ashley Cadwallader