Previously: Gen. (Ret.) Richard B. Myers: on the futility of swatting blogs (January 22, 2014)

General (Retired) Richard B. Myers, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking

at the Ike Skelton lecture on the campus of the University of Central Missouri on January 22, 2014.

Posted 9/26/2005 9:45 PM     Updated 9/27/2005 8:05 AM

Stakes in Iraq rival those in WWII, Gen. Myers says

By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Defeating the Iraqi insurgency is as important to the United States as winning World War II was 60 years ago, the Pentagon’s top officer said Monday.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who will leave his post as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the end of this week, said the United States must win in Iraq because “the outcome and consequences of defeat are greater than World War II.”

[….]

STATE OF THE UNION WITH CANDY CROWLEY [CNN}

U.S. Combat Troops Leave Iraq

Aired August 22, 2010 – 09:00   ET

[….]

Air Force general Richard Myers served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005. Near the end of his tenure, he said the United States must win in Iraq, because, quote, “the outcome and consequences of defeat are greater than World War II.”

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On Wednesday, January 22nd in Warrensburg General (Retired) Richard B. Myers, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the Ike Skelton Lecture on the campus of the University of Central Missouri. He spoke at length, then answered submitted questions from the audience (read from the podium by Brigadier General Thomas Bussiere), and then took questions directly from the audience.

Earlier in the morning General Myers took questions from the media in a short press conference.

One of the submitted question referred to an oft repeated quote on Iraq attributed to General Myers:

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Question: ….Sir, along the same lines regarding the war in Iraq, you were quoted as saying that the outcome and consequences of defeat are greater than World War Two. Can you expand on this comment?

General (Retired) Richard B. Myers: Yeah, the, the, the comment, or the question is not quite right. What I said is, the threat from violent extremism, and you can read terrorism, I just don’t think terrorism is a good moniker, but, so, the threat from violent extremism is the greatest threat we face to our freedoms since World War Two. And I go into detail about why I think so, and I still think it is, by the way, and so I give you the, this could be a whole talk, I’m gonna give you, I’ll give you the thirty second version if I can. Let’s see, Uh, extremist are ruthless, they’ll do anything to, to get their point across. Uh, September eleventh two thousand one was a great tragedy. You can imagine greater tragedies if they had access to, uh, nuclear, uh, fissile material for bombs or [inaudible] devices. If you don’t think they’d use those in big cities, small cities, uh, they would, truly. And the big thing is that that kind of activity, uh, creates fear. I think you still, I bet some of you know people who still won’t fly after nine eleven. Uh, think about the, uh, the Olympic athlete that’s told his parents, why don’t you stay at home, don’t come to Sochi, watch it on TV. I mean, fear does terrible things to our minds and it, we don’t act rationally when we’re afraid in most cases. And so that’s why I think it’s a big threat to our freedom. Um, hasn’t come true yet, but I think we’ve spent an awful lot of money and resources, and the international community has, trying to thwart this whole threat from violent extremism. So it wasn’t so much the Iraq thing, it was the larger picture of terrorism.

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General (Retired) Richard B. Myers.