4/22/2003

“The United States yesterday [April 22, 2003] received the hero’s welcome it has awaited since the start of the invasion of Iraq as the new interim leader arrived in the north of the country. [Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance leader] Lieutenant-General Jay Garner was mobbed by thousands of Kurds after landing in the city of Sulaimanyah to begin a two-day tour of the north. Thronged by young students and girls with bouquets of flowers at the local university, General Garner said the liberated Kurdish areas of the north were a model for the modernisation and democratisation of all Iraq. ‘Let us take the spirit of the free people we have up here in the Kurdish area and spread that to the people of all Iraq,’ he said.”

 – Mark Baker, “‘Liberator’ Garner a Hit with Kurds,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 23, 2003