11629 quotes by journalists for you to enjoy

Any American who has spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan will tell you: the closer you get, the less certain you are of anything. If you are in Iraq, if you are in Afghanistan, everything is ambiguous. Everything is murky and gray and uncertain and possibly lethal. Dexter Filkins

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

People Cheese Fighting Striving Kind Put Baghdad Concern Cambridge Go Where Dying Biggest Place Jarring Sandwich Your

It is one of the great ironies of the American war in Iraq - was that the guys who really got the most out of it were the Iranians. And they have us to thank for that. Yeah, I mean we basically put Maliki in power in 2006, but he has been - he's really not a friend of the United States. He's a friend of the Iranian regime. Dexter Filkins

War Great Power States Out Has-Been Guys He Put Most Got Yeah Were Been Iranian Iranian Regime Iranians Iraq Friend Thank Ironies American Regime Mean Us Really Who United United States Basically

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

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The overriding goal of counterinsurgency is to make friends: You make friends with the people; you isolate the insurgents. Dexter Filkins

You People Make Isolate Overriding Goal Friends

I think - I think the real nightmare place now is less Afghanistan than it is Pakistan. I mean, again, Pakistan is this gigantic country, deeply troubled, kind of almost ungovernable, sitting on top of probably 50 or 60 nuclear warheads. Nobody really knows where the warheads are; the Americans certainly don't know where they are. Dexter Filkins

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In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense. Dexter Filkins

War Best You People Drama Extraordinary Extraordinary Circumstances Ways Those Worst Circumstances Find See Could Never Most Very Intense Human Epic Themselves Act Acting Imagine