COMPARISON QUOTES

"That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq."
COMPARE

"The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win."
-Michael Moore

"I think that the reports that you (David Petraeus) provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief. In any of the metrics that have been referenced in your many hours of testimony, any fair reading of the advantages and disadvantages accruing post-surge, in my view, end up on the downside."
-Hillary Clinton

"(The) idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong."
-Howard Dean

"By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong."
-Dick Durbin

"An escalation, whether it is called a surge or any other name, is still an escalation, and I believe it would be an immense new mistake."
-Ted Kennedy

"...it's clear that the current strategy – the President's escalation – has failed to achieve its goal of bringing about a resolution of the fundamental conflict between Sunni and Shia."
-John Kerry

"...I'm absolutely convinced right now the surge isn't working and I'm convinced that if they don't pay attention to what I'm saying and a lot of other members of Congress are saying they're going to have a disaster on their hands..."
-John Murtha

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse. I think (the surge) takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there. So I am going to actively oppose the president's proposal."
-Barack Obama

"The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. (This surge) is a failure. This is a failure."
-Nancy Pelosi

"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week."
-Harry Reid

CONTRAST
"The Mahdi Army’s decline also means that the Iraqi state, all but impotent in the early years of the war, has begun to act the part, taking over delivery of some services and control of some neighborhoods.

“'The Iraqi government broke their branches and took down their tree,' said Abu Amjad, a civil servant who lives in the northern Baghdad district of Sadr City, once seen as an unbreachable stronghold for the group. "
-Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times

"The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

"Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

"Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government."
-Robert Burns and Robert Reid, The Associated Press

*Hat tip to John Hawkins of Right Wing News fame for these quotes in his Town Hall article.

Iraq, The Surge, Quotes