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The fact is that Iran doesn't want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.

David Petraeus

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David Petraeus
Age: 71
Born: 1952
Born: November 7
Former Director Of The Central Intelligence Agency
Military Officer
Politician
New York City
New York
David Howell Petraeus
Fact
Facts
Doesn
Back
Come
Afghan
Iran
Citizens

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After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair.
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Pakistan are very keen to carry out the operations themselves. And there's significant effort on the part of the US and other countries to provide assistance that can enable Pakistan to do just that.
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The first official statements of President Asif Ali Zardari's new government have been firm and robust. Pakistan is obviously a renewed democracy.
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If you look at casualties, you find countries that had much higher loss rates per capita than the US. Denmark comes to mind, the United Kingdom, they have suffered heavy losses at various points, the Germans as well.
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Every civilian's death diminishes us, collectively.
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Al-Qaida in particular remains dangerous, and there [in Iraq] is some residual militia and special group presence. There are still between 20 and 30 attacks per day, still periodic car bombs and still loss of innocent civilians.
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Syria has allowed its soil to be transited by foreign fighters who have come from a variety of source countries in the Gulf area and in the - in North African countries.There are some signs that that may have been reduced somewhat in the last couple of months. We need to watch that a bit and see if that is the case.
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Fighting in cities is a totally different endeavor than obviously fighting out in the open.
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US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and I have repeatedly sought to emphasize that the progress in Iraq is fragile and also, possibly, reversible.
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We obviously don't want to cause problems for the Afghan government, President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan people. In fact, we want them to support our efforts on their behalf and not see us as unwelcome occupiers.
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There has, indeed, been very substantial progress in Iraq over the past year - violence is down by 80 percent, civilian deaths by about the same, and so on.
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The task [in Afghanistan] is to reduce civilian casualties while still not hesitating to respond to enemies who are trying to kill our soldiers.
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Reconciliation is what takes place, of course, at higher levels. President Karzai has been very clear about the red lines for reconciliation, accept the constitution, lay down their weapons, cut their ties with al Qaeda and essentially become productive or at least participating members of society in that regard.
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I will not ever run for political office, I can assure you of that.
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Afghanistan has other enormous challenges as well, including a political system that is still very much developing, although there has been some progress in the past several years.
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Progress in Iraq has always been about teams of people and teams of teams - and ultimately about young men and women, Iraqi as well as people from the coalition.
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I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.
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I did a week-long assessment in 2005 at (then Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld's request. Following our return, I told him that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign of what we then termed the long war.
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Iraq has gone from being on the brink to being on the mend, and it clearly has some big advantages.
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The art of coalition command - whether it is here in Afghanistan, whether it was in Iraq or in Bosnia or in Haiti - is to take the resources you are provided with, understand what the strengths and weaknesses are and to employ them to the best overall effect.
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