After literally hundreds of firefights, Chosen Company became increasingly battle-hardened. And they also became increasingly suspicious of their Afghan counterparts, believing - with their lives on the line at the end of the day - that they could only truly rely on themselves.
— Richard Engel
Kidnapping is always a threat in this life of reporting on men hurting one another because of religion and politics.
The U.S. presence and American missteps made ethnic violence in Iraq far worse than it would have been otherwise after Saddam Saddam Hussein's fall.
War does horrible things to human beings, to societies. It brings out the best, but most often the worst, in our human nature.
We know that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has some very dangerous, very important leaders who are tied directly to the top leadership of al Qaeda central, including a man who was formerly Osama bin Laden's secretary.
We should have a time to reflect on the accomplishments of the military, of their sacrifices, of their failures.
The U.S. spent years and years and billions of dollars to build the Iraqi army only to watch it collapse and hand over so many of its weapons.
For decades, Saddam and his Sunni minority had imposed their will on Iraq, carrying on a 14-century tradition of Sunnis controlling Mesopotamia despite a Shiite majority.
I don't think I'm invincible.
I think war should be illegal.
Based on the people l've spoken to, I think the impression is: Is America safer from Al Qaeda? Yes. Is America weaker as a nation because we have overspent and over-focused on Al Qaeda? Yes. I think that would be the conclusion that people seem to have come to and that I tend to agree with.
I had some training on how to cope with hostage-taking.
Foreigners who speak Arabic in the Middle East are often assumed to be working for the C.I.A. or Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad.
War is not a petri dish to examine and analyze our emotions.
The U.S. invaded the wrong country, destroying an odious government that was not responsible for 9/11. I don't know how you recover from invading the wrong country, no matter how you spin it.
Once you start bombing in Syria, when you start looking for targets, there will be a lot.
We're all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists anymore.
President George W. Bush, in his now-rare public appearances and interviews, still refuses to acknowledge he did anything to help Iran. But it doesn't really matter what he thinks.
The Arab Spring is over. The days of the protesters with laptops and BlackBerrys in Tahrir Square are long gone.
I don't look for good-news stories or bad-news stories.
A lot of Iran's empowerment is a result of the war in Iraq.
Insurgencies are easy to make and hard to stop. Only a few ingredients need to combine to create an insurgency; like oxygen and fire, they're very common and mix all too often. The recipe is, simply, a legitimate grievance against a state, a state that refuses to compromise, a quorum of angry people, and access to weapons.
An Egyptian newspaper once publicly identified me as the C.I.A. station chief in Cairo. It seemed so stupid at the time. I was only 24, a little young to be a station chief, and, of course, I was never with the C.I.A.
The Syrians are better suited to sort out their internal divisions than anyone else.
When students and liberals initially occupied Tahrir Square, it looked like it might be a passing thing.
There are many Israelis who are not keen on Barack Obama - they did not want to see him elected.
When you look at Syria, and you look at all the militant groups on the ground, there are many groups in Syria that could pose a threat to the United States, not just Khorasan.
For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first.
Not surprisingly, in most Sunni regions there has little appetite for free U.S.-sponsored elections.
Unfortunately, the American policy towards Pakistan is just to worry and express concern, and that is not a clear policy at all.
I'm basically a pacifist.
I don't think you're going to be seeing the U.S. employing large army divisions to deal with small terrorist groups again. I don't think they're going to be occupying foreign nations in order to dry up terrorist groups within them. I think that lesson has been learned.
