Who is John Abizaid, and why should you care?

"John Abizaid is a different kind of general.
He is often cited as
the highest-ranking
Arab-American in U.S. history"



Former US Central Command Chief General John Abizaid

We at Central Command, partnered as we are with many Islamic nations, recognize that the War on Terrorism is not a war against Islam; it is a war against the enemies of Islam.


~ US Central Command Chief General John Abizaid, SEPTEMBER 25, 2003

The United States must make it clear that America has no territorial designs. "We must make clear that we fight with them out of mutual respect and mutual benefit," Abizaid said.

ALL HAIL GLOBAL DHIMMING

9/18/2007:

"Iran is not a suicide nation," he said. "I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon."

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

~ SOURCE LINK


9/17/20007:

General John Abizaid (Ret.), former Commander of US Central Command, discusses the role of the military in striking a balance between hard and soft power in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies


AUDIO MP3 LINK



TRANSCRIPT (PDF)



Profile: John Abizaid:
from the BBC, Tuesday, 8 July, 2003


Lieutenant General John Abizaid faces high expectations in his role as the new man in charge of US Central Command. He is trumpeted as the man who could help sway the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East.

The grandson of Christian Lebanese immigrants, he is a fluent Arabic speaker who professes to love the Arab world.

The 52-year-old father of three is said to be a new breed of American military leader, combining hands-on military leadership with scholarly achievement.
He has a reputation for being less doctrinaire on strategy and has strongly advocated training troops in peacekeeping as well as offensive roles.

Lieutenant General Abizaid went to university in Jordan and holds a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies from Harvard - earning him the nickname "Mad Arab" while at the US Military Academy in West Point.

His 30-year military career is equally impressive, and includes stints in northern Iraq during the latest Gulf crisis, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He served as an operations officer with a UN observer group in Lebanon and was assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

While leading a US Army Ranger rifle company during the 1983 invasion of Grenada, he apparently inspired a scene in the 1986 Clint Eastwood film 'Heartbreak Ridge' when he used a commandeered bulldozer to advance on a Cuban position.

Reassuring message

As head of US Central Command, Lieutenant General Abizaid will be responsible for military operations from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia, covering much of the Middle East.

He faces a tough task, dealing with the increased terrorist threat in the region as well as reconstruction commitments in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

In March, he expressed confidence that Iraqi civilians would see American forces as liberators and not conquerors. "I would say, as a person who has studied the Arab world and loves the Arab world, that the majority of educated Arabs that I talk to know that Saddam Hussein has been a plague on the Arab world and on his own people," he said. Jean AbiNader of the Arab-American Institute says his appointment should send a reassuring message to Arab-Americans and the Arab world.


"There's concern... that the US is discriminating against Arab-Americans because of their ethnicity and religion," he told the US-based National Review.

"To have someone in that kind of position, who is clearly not just there for show, is really important".

But Daniel Bymann, of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the issue of Lieutenant General Abizaid's ethnicity is unlikely to hold sway with ordinary people in Iraq. "The Iraqis are likely to be more focused on whether the incoming individual can deliver humanitarian relief and maintain order," he said. "That's what they'll judge him on, not his ethnic background".



9/19/2007:

IRAN PROMISES "FINAL RESPONSE" TO AMERICA AND ISRAEL ON OCT 12




Iran has promised a devastating “final response” to supporters of the Jewish State on October 12, the Islamic Republic’s Quds (Jerusalem) Day.

“Supporters of the Zionist regime will receive their response during the world Quds Day's rallies,” Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said at a weekly press conference Wednesday.


According to the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Elham was describing Iran's planned response for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit “to the occupied Palestine [sic].”



The US loses all opportunities to cooperate with regional and other world states by trying to support a regime (the Zionist regime) which is now at its weakest political and social position," Elham said. "Supporters of the Zionist regime will definitely receive the final response for their support on Quds day."Quds Day is held each year on the last Friday of the Islamic month of Ramadan. It was instituted in 1979, following the Islamic revolution by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.



“I ask all the Muslims of the world and the Muslim governments to join together to sever the hand of this usurper and its supporters,” Khomeini said when proposing the day. “I call on all the Muslims of the world to select as Quds Day the last Friday in the holy month of Ramadan - which is itself a determining period and can also be the determiner of the Palestinian people’s fate - and through a ceremony demonstrating the solidarity of Muslims world-wide, announce their support for the legitimate rights of the Muslim people. I ask G-d Almighty for the victory of the Muslims over the infidels.”On Quds Day in 2000, Khomeini’s successor Khamenei called for Israel’s destruction, saying it is “the only way to solve the problems of the Middle East.”



Open Threats of War


One of Khamenei’s top advisers, Major General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, declared Tuesday that Iran would strike “in shortest possible time” in case of any strike on its nuclear facilities. He referred specifically to the army of suicide-bombers and child-soldiers active during the Iran-Iraq war. "The enemy will face strong armed forces especially the Basij [suicide-bombers and child soldiers] if it unleashed a military attack on Iran," he said. He claimed that the Basij army has 20 million members.According to IRNA, “He said that the US has been entangled in a quagmire in Iraq and cannot easily survive.”



Iranian Embassy: US Carried Out the Worst Holocaust



Responding to US President George W. Bush's recent statement that a nuclear Iran would place the region under threat of nuclear holocaust, Iran's embassy in Mexico released the following statement Tuesday: "The term used by President George W. Bush should be referred to what the US carried out in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the World War II when it destroyed the two Japanese cities with atomic bombs." It added that Bush “implicitly admitted that what Washington had done in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a crime worse than Hitler's crimes."

INFILTRATION


THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD PROJECT