• "I say to Osama and the boys, bring it on." -- Rolling Stone Keith Richards pre-empts a Presidential one-liner
• "He completely lost the plot. He stormed around all day screaming at everyone, even the Ł5-an-hour bar staff, telling them how we were all conmen and useless. Then he went on stage and did it in public." -- a member of the stage crew at Michael Moore’s London show
• "He is the shambling, wide-eyed, compassionate person in all of us." -- James Norman in the Melbourne Age doesn’t share the crew member’s opinion
• "For me, I hope last year was the last when anger, frustration and despair ruled my professional psychology." -- Margo Kingston speaks too soon
• "As John Howard tours Canberra's charcoal suburbs, I wonder if the unsigned Kyoto agreement pricks his conscience." -- Sydney Morning Herald letter-writer Warren Tindall believes a global warming protocol would halt Australian fires
• "Why won't Labor and the Australian Left call for the removal of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on human rights grounds alone?" -- Jim Nolan questions his fellow leftists
• "My SUV, assuming Hummer comes out with a model for those who find the current ones too cramped, will look something like the Louisiana Superdome on wheels. It'll guzzle so much gas as I walk out to my driveway there will be squads of Saudi princes gaping and applauding. It'll come, when I buy it, with little Hondas and Mazdas already embedded in the front grillwork." -- David Brooks
• "With Australia and the UK standing beside my nation in times of trial, I neither need nor want anyone else." -- Stephen Den Beste
• "Heed that greatest of Middle East correspondents, Robert Fisk, who warns in The Independent of London that truth already lies adying." -- Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton
• "I really haven't researched him. He's not an interest of mine." -- Iraq-bound Australian human shield Gordon Sloane knows all he needs to know about Saddam Hussein
• "What has happened to the kind people of Australia that I knew and loved when I immigrated here eight years ago? Now all the Australian people seem to have for me is hatred and scorn and bigotry. By the way, I'm not a Muslim from the Middle East; I'm a Jew from the United States." -- SMH letter-writer John Burnett
• "We're not yet at a stage of cultural maturity where we even know what racism is." -- The Age’s Malcolm Knox
• "I never got the memo telling me that 'cowboy' is an insult. And if someone wants to try to convince me that being a cowboy is something to be ashamed of, I say, 'Let's take this discussion outside and settle it.'" -- reader Polly Bolton
"I am not anti-American." -- Margo Kingston
• "Idiots!" -- Ivory Coast rioters, to "ducking, crouching" French troops
• Get your tits out
Get your tits out
Get your tits out for Iraq
-- reader David Griffin composes a catchy tune for naked anti-war protesters
• "Last week's column about Osama Bin Laden's State of the Union address was one of the most pathetic, tacky, puerile and offensive bits of copy ever published in an Australian newspaper." -- Crikey.com.au takes exception to my mild opinions
• "I am eclectically left-leaning in politics, but I cannot comprehend how the left can blithely leave the Iraqi people in the hands of one of most monstrous regimes imaginable." -- The Age’s Pamela Bone
• "I hope the attempt by the French and German governments to find a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis will be successful in order to avoid senseless killing of humankind. I and many other Germans will never forget the American terror bombings of German cities during WWII and the mass slaughter of women, children and the elderly for years on end." -- Age letter-writer Karl-Heinz Walter forgets certain other events in wartime Germany
• "So Osama's voice is back, reminding us once again that the bloke the world bombed Afghanistan to get got away. He's the voice guaranteed to get world-wide coverage, and the voice says attack when the US attacks Iraq. Attack Saddam, and the enemy of Osama's enemy becomes his ally. Thanks, George." -- Margo Kingston
• "after reading your site for an hour even i could see you were a troubled young man..seek help tim buy a travel book or even take some heroin and watch a documentry on dolphins then you can come join us.your missing out tim,when your lying on your deathbed gasping for your final breath your gonnae think of all the things you never done and your gonna cry,your gonna cry like a baby tim,and your final words will be ‘can i start again please daddy’ then its lights out tim." -- reader Anne M.
• "In the few weeks of peace left to us, we are seeing a calamitous global failure of American diplomacy" -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton
• "This weekend could be one of those ‘turning points’, where suddenly the earth moves, the mood shifts, and politics is transformed in an instant ... Howard's very legitimacy could be at stake if he defies public opinion to join a unilateral strike." -- Margo Kingston gets excited about anti-war protests
• "Imagine my horror when I realised we were sharing our romantic evening with 100,000 angry extras from Mad Max II. Aside from the obvious annoyance of having dancing skeletons and filthy fat 'angels' outside our window all night, every time I opened my mouth to say 'I love you' in my most handsome tone, the words that appeared to come out were 'Peace in our time!', courtesy of some megaphone-fondling fuckwit a few yards away." -- Jack Marx’s attempt to celebrate Valentine's Day with his wife is ruined by protesters
• "We believe that in the wake of September 11, the only sane foreign policy for the US and all its allies to pursue is to examine just what caused that level of extreme hate, and act in a manner which will reduce it." -- SMH columnist Peter FitzSimons plans his Islamic conversion
• "It's not up to any head of state to bring a leader to fall, no matter who he is. It is the task of the people." -- human shield Judith Menson
• "My friends call drunken fast food 'thwapugh' because one guy was so loaded, he went into a Burger King and that was all he could say." -- Juan Gato
• "Dripping with Ivy League degrees in international relations, an accomplished classical pianist, speaking elegant French, monumentally self-assured, Condy knows everything and nothing." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton is unaware that Condi Rice has no Ivy League degrees
• "I have an uneasy feeling that many on the intellectual left are fearful that America will lose its next war amid massive casualties – but are even more fearful that America may win with minimal casualties." -- Robert Fisk, on his readers
• "We have NO mainstream newspaper to speak for the 40% of Australians who don't want any war at all. There is no paper here like the London Mirror." -- David Marr demands a circulation-shedding Pilger rag in Australia
• "Could anything be more pathetic than the Arab demonstration against war? What on earth is it with the Arabs? Of all people, they – and they alone – are likely to suffer in this American invasion of their homeland. Yet, faced with catastrophe, the Arabs are like mice." -- Robert Fisk urges resistance
• "The next time I'm tired of listening to my wife's crap, I'm going to tell her, 'you've lost a good opportunity to keep quiet.'" -- Howard Owens takes a cue from French diplomacy
• "I am unimpressed by the grandstanding of certain European leaders." -- Jose Ramos Horta, East Timor's minister of foreign affairs and cooperation
• "He smoked cigars, drank beer and ate greasy food. He was an amazing man." -- Lisa Saxton, granddaughter of Florida’s John McMorran, who died at 113
• "Wherever you are, Osama bin Laden, I love you, brother and I do it for you and I pray for you because to me you're just a spiritual warrior standing up for Islam and propagating freedom around the world." -- Khalid, an Aboriginal Muslim interviewed on SBS-TV
• "I wouldn't say I was part of an anti-war campaign." -- Robert Fisk
• "I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them." -- ex-satirist Tom Lehrer
• "It's worse than you think. I believe in it." -- Tony Blair explains to peaceniks the terrible truth about his views on the war
• "May I just single out for salutations, on the ‘anti-war’ side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam." -- Guardian columnist Julie Burchill
• "I am ashamed to be leaving you at this time of need, but I'm going out of pure, cold fear." -- human shield Godfrey Maynell tells Iraqis he’s heading home
• "You want to really annoy the conservative warmongering powers that be? Work your ass off to pump up the vibration." -- SF Chronicle online columnist Mark Morford talking about ... well, who the hell knows?
• "It is too harsh. It is unacceptable. That's why we have released no pictures." -- General Amir Al-Saadi, special aide to Saddam Hussein, is saad about the destruction of Iraq’s Al Samoud missiles
• "Could you please let the president know that most Australians don't approve of his obsession with bombing the bejesus out of Iraq, and we think he should stop trying to boss the United Nations around like a schoolyard bully." -- Age columnist Sian Prior leaves a message at the White House
• "One has to wonder what the anti-American campaign to save Iraq from liberation really wants to achieve. Perhaps the baby boomers facing ageing and death just want to ensure that nothing better follows them." -- SMH columnist P.P. McGuinness
• "I'd like to say, Mr Howard please, please, please do what you can to stop a military attack on Iraq. These people do not deserve to be attacked. These are now people with names and faces. These are children I've played with." -- human shield Donna Mulhearn
• "Shut up you minion, you (U.S.) agent, you monkey. You are addressing Iraq. You are insolent. You are a traitor to the Islamic nation." -- Saddam aide Izzat Ibrahim to a Kuwaiti delegate at an Islamic summit
• "It would be unlikely France and Germany would come to our rescue." -- Portugal’s foreign minister Antonio Martins da Cruz explains why his country sides with the US
• "On each side of the war against war, hopes soar, hopes dive, hour by hour now. Resignations abound, timetables slip, and the world waits, mesmerised. I'm off to Melbourne to record an arts chat show." -- Margo Kingston
• "I'm a young actor in Hollywood. My few friends who agree with me that we should be going to war, and I, call Jessica Lange, and her ilk, the ‘syndicate.’ Of course, we do so in hushed tones, and in fear of reprisals." -- Anonymous, of Los Angeles
• "Watch how the propaganda unfolds once the bombing is over and the Americans are running Baghdad and their spin machine. There will be the ‘discovery of Saddam's secret arsenal,’ probably in the basement of one his palaces." -- John Pilger
• "We cannot create a gutter press, Anglo-Saxon style. French people are too well educated for there to be any readership for such a publication." -- French member of Parliament Olivier Dassault
• "To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war ... I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict." -- Hans Blix confirms doubts about his suitability as a weapons inspector
• "I've just puyblished a detaioled comments on his answers to the quesytions.Stadn d by my interpretation. etation." -- late night email from an opinionated Australian journalist
• "John Howard has lost it." -- Margo Kingston
• "I think he is so disturbed that it doesn't even enter his consciousness. Maybe he was abused as a child." -- antiwar campaigner Helen Caldicott analyses Paul Wolfowitz
• "There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this." -- Iraqi witness statement supplied to the organisation Indict
• "The blood of Australians, if and when it is spilt, is on this Prime Minister's shoulders." -- Greens leader Bob Brown
• "I am a conservative. I voted for George W. Bush and I simply agree with most everything he has said." -- Lenora Tomalin, mother of ultra-leftoid Susan Sarandon
• "A Frenchman built the Chevrolet." -- Michael Moore. Louis Chevrolet was Swiss
• "There are many questions that beg to be asked. Some are being asked rhetorically by many journalists, including a great writer at the New York Times by the name of Daniel Friedman." -- Sheryl Crow loves great writers, but can’t remember their names
• "There will come a time. A time when historians will look back on this day and try to gauge just what the mood of the Australian people was on the eve of the invasion. To those historians I say, 'Welcome to our nightmare'." -- SMH columnist Peter FitzSimons
• "This is the day you've been waiting for." -- Iraqi state radio, after US forces hacked into broadcasts at the commencement of bombing
• "I think these people don't understand what they are talking about. They are supporting Saddam emotionally." -- Gafoor Muhamad of the Australian Kurdish Community Association, on antiwar protesters
• "I wish we'd had politicians in the 1930s with the guts of Tony Blair and John Howard ... Because then I'd have a lot more relatives." -- talkback radio caller Jill, in tears
• "I think John 'Coward' should just grow up." -- actor Heath Ledger
• "I'm shaking my head in desperate sorrow for you, you pitiful creature." -- Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer to Labor leader Simon Crean
• "Your names will be recorded as heroes in the bright lists of history. You will help restore the weeping face of humanity with your good deeds." -- Iraqi refugee Hadi Kazwini sends a message to Australian troops
• "At Baalbek Nuts I bought pistachios from the Lebanese owners, who answered my request for their thoughts on the war with the typically Lebanese response of ‘no problem’. It's a lie, as we all knew." -- Robert Fisk
• "Well the Nazis used to call it ‘blitzkrieg’ when they did it prior to the Second World War, a softening up process. The Americans are calling it 'shock and awe'." -- the ABC’s John Highfield
• "The Mother of all Armageddons is waiting to tell him how wrong he is." -- Bob Ellis predicts disaster for George W. Bush
• "They would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler." -- former peacenik Kenneth Joseph admits a visit to Iraq "shocked me back to reality"
• "Yes, civilians will die. My cousins will die. Maybe. Allah forbid. But here is a certainty that you do not understand in your simplistic Nickelodeon diplomacy, is that you are guaranteed to have civilians die under Saddam. So now you try again to answer my question without playing the ping-pong: How does leaving Saddam in power promote peace and justice in Iraq?" -- Iraqi caller Mohammed confronts United For Peace and Justice spokesperson Andrea Buffa on US radio
• "How will the hate-filled zealots of the anti-war movement who bombard me daily with violent emails react to the joy of the liberated Iraqi people? With silence, most likely, having learned nothing." -- SMH columnist Miranda Devine
• "Support our Troops--but only those who Frag their commanding officer." -- poster at Indymedia
• "I can't comment on articles that appear in American newspapers. The information we give you here is factual." -- Australian air marshall Angus Houston responds to issues raised in The New York Times
• "The questions they ask usually in the polls is: do you support the President's attempt to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein? ... If you ask a question like: do you support the dropping of powerful explosives upon the heads of totally innocent men, women and children, demolishing their homes and their schools and their hospitals, are you in favour of that? That would change the answers, I think, quite a bit." -- US writer William Blum, interviewed on the ABC
• "Speak for yourselves, appeasers. Many Iraqis who dare to defy Saddam Hussein and his secret agents are trying to tell you they support this war." -- Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt
• "Hug the Fuck out of 'em Philippe!" -- Ray Smuckles
• "An American soldier, Saddam in his sights, has a picture of a naked, buxom woman on his dashboard, an obvious affront to Muslim sensibilities." -- Margo Kingston
• "I saw the entire place stand up and applaud." -- Michael Moore’s alternative history of the Academy Awards
• "A bombing with so many civilian casualties that Robert Fisk could personally visit them all." -- National Post columnist Andrew Coyne
• "'Open the doors of the chambers of your hearts'? Um, those would be valves. These people appear to be advocating bacterial endocarditis as part of the peace process." -- blogger Dr Alice dissects peacenik lyrics
• "American marines shot up a CNN television crew, killing at least one and most likely three journalists." -- SMH columnist Tom Ramsey gets CNN confused with ITV
• "I think the best way to answer that question would be to rip this podium out of the ground and then smash it over your head." -- Donald Rumsfeld, as imagined by Frank J.
• "I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true. Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite." -- Qatar-based BBC defence correspondent Paul Adams, in an memo to his London editors
• "With no sign that the regime will collapse it seems that, one way or another, slaughter is coming." -- Guy Rundle in the Melbourne Age
• "Do those who have written this tripe ever dare to go back and see how wrong they were last time?" -- Christopher Hitchens
• "The harassment, arrest, detention and frustration of those who are against the war is becoming routine." -- The Guardian’s Gary Younge describes life in Bush’s America
• "Don't you understand this is a peace rally?" -- screamed by an unknown girl at a Sydney antiwar demonstration, as the usual violence erupted
• "Just as Iraq was invaded by the viral Republican administration, I have been invaded by these viral Republican conditions." -- Bay Area peacenik Deborah Dashow Ruth blames Bush for her shingles, ulcer, and throbbing head
• "First we'll coax Saddam out of his bunker with a trail of delicious candy. Then, once his belly is full and he's all sleepy and happy, we'll calmly explain that we don't approve of what he's been doing and it's not very nice and we wish he'd stop. And he'll be like, ‘Whoa, I never thought of it that way. You guys are my friends! I like you!’ And then everybody will hug and cry, and then get a little embarrassed about crying, and then make some jokes to cover up being embarrassed. And then a beautiful rainbow will appear, and a shy unicorn will walk down it, and Saddam will ride it to the North Pole, and he'll spend the rest of his life helping Santa make wonderful toys for all the good little girls and boys, and there'll be hot chocolate, and, and, and nobody will ever ever die again for any reason ever." -- Jim Treacher
• "if i ever see someone so much as looking at my car in a funny way i will fuckin kill them i swear to god." -- blogger Snow Bunnie
• "No matter how scared and vulnerable our troops may be, their anxiety is nothing compared with the suffering of the Iraqi people terrorised by the bombing and shelling. The allied soldiers, though obliged to follow orders, have joined the military of their own free will, and are well paid and fed." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin
• "I'm the f***ing Prime Minister!" -- Tony Blair
• "Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here?" -- Guardian columnist Julie Burchill
• "I didn't see a single person booing." -- Michael Moore revisits Oscar night
• "If Australia is attacked, it's no longer terrorism. We have invaded Iraq. Iraq, or its new allies, have every right to attack back." -- Margo Kingston
• "No country can hope to beat the Yanks off with conventional weapons - they've got air, sea and land completely covered. The only recourse is chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (the Yanks used them in Vietnam, and have not ruled out using them in this war)." -- Margo Kingston
• "Plastic shredders? We used to dream of 'aving plastic shredders. When I were a lad, we 'ad to get oop at three o'clock in t'morning and work 27-hour day at secret police headquarters, rending dissidents with ordinary garden rake. But tell that to yer yoong war protestors today, and they won't believe you." -- reader Paul Zrimsek reacts to news that Uday Hussein has a Yorkshire accent
• "Being against the war was yesterday's argument: today the only question is whether you are for or against victory." -- Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt
• "A too-swift and easy coalition victory may substantially increase the risk of future wars." -- Fairfax columnist Robert Manne
• "Please kill Saddam Hussein." -- Iranian-born cafe owner to US tourist Mike Gerhardt
• "I do believe this city is freakin' ours." -- Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Georgia, arrives in Baghdad
• "Rupert Murdoch's vast newspaper empire has waged a relentless pro-war propaganda war before and since the war began." -- Margo Kingston
• "Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad. How, I kept asking myself, could the Americans batter their way through these defenses?" -- Robert Fisk. With Fisk that day was SMH columnist Paul McGeough, who later reported: “Robert gets a bit windy from time to time."
• "That war can brutalise those left behind is an old lesson of history and we're getting worried about The Sydney Morning Herald's Miranda Devine, who's starting to write about humans as vermin." -- Media Watch’s David Marr complains about Devine describing terrorists as “cockroaches". Media Watch had earlier used the same word to describe Sydney radio commentators
• "So much is being lost and destroyed in this war. Lives. Ideals. Dreams." -- Margo Kingston laments the end of Saddam Hussein’s dreams
• "It is an appalling military adventure mounted by appalling people with the certainty of appalling consequences for years to come, not only for the Iraqi people." -- but also for SMH columnist Alan Ramsey
• "Imagine the damage being done to the children of Iraq. For those who escape physically will, inevitably, be mentally maimed, haunted for the rest of their lives." -- Phillip Adams
• "They stand, they fight, sometimes they run when we engage them. But often they run into our machine guns and we shoot them down like the morons they are." -- Brigadier-General John Kelly on non-Iraqi Muslims fighting outside Baghdad. He continued: "They appear willing to die. We are trying our best to help them out in that endeavour"
• "I have this delightful fantasy of left-wingers throughout the Western world putting their hands up and saying: ‘Well, actually we got that a little bit wrong.’" -- British columnist Janet Daley in Melbourne’s Age
• "Well, dawn has broken over Baghdad, welcoming day one of the new freedom, but if this is liberty, then it's far from perfect." -- the ABC’s John Highfield
• "The Americans ‘liberated’ Baghdad yesterday, destroyed the centre of Saddam Hussein's quarter-century of brutal dictatorial power but brought behind them an army of looters who unleashed upon the ancient city a reign of pillage and anarchy." -- Robert Fisk
• "I am happy to be wrong about the fall of Baghdad." -- John Quiggin
• "GO HOME HUMAN SHIELDS YOU U.S. WANKERS." -- banner carried through Baghdad by jubilant Iraqis
• "This is no time for gloating. Saddam has fallen. Many Iraqis are relieved. But the world is no safer." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin
• "One unpalatable consequence of victory in Iraq is that we are about to be offered a toxic brew of moral smugness and self-righteousness." -- Fairfax columnist Hugh Mackay
• "I am here now to tell you, we do not have any scud missiles and I don't know why they were fired into Kuwait." -- one of Iraqi information minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf’s greatest hits
• "Donna Mulhearn can't reconcile the images of cheering Iraqis greeting the toppling of President Saddam Hussein with the blood on the streets of Baghdad." -- Australian Associated Press reports a human shield’s confusion
• "This must have been Saddam's love shack." -- US Army sergeant Spencer Willardson locates a townhouse featuring a mirrored bedroom, lamps shaped like women, airbrushed paintings of a topless blonde woman and a moustached hero battling a crocodile
• "It is not just the vulgar, premature bawdiness of pro-war triumphalists which I find revolting. It is that they accuse anti-war people of being uncaring about the people of Iraq, and the lack of concern that these proponents of war show for the bodies of the killed and those maimed and injured by their invasion." -- The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
• "What we do not want is a situation of instability and the basis for terrorism off the back of this so-called victory, and it's the longer-term consequences, the humanitarian aid, how are we going to put in effect the new political system." -- Simon Crean, eloquent as ever
• "Make me dinner. Iron my shirt." -- sign carried by a representative of NO MA’AM during feminist protests at Augusta National
• "Although it would be foolish to predict what will happen in Iraq now, the apocalyptic predictions of as many as 500,000 civilian deaths (from a widely quoted leaked UN report) have so far proved exaggerated." -- The Age’s Gay Alcorn
• "Doctors at a Kuwaiti hospital on Wednesday began treating an Iraqi child who touched hearts around the world after he lost his arms." -- Reuters
• "Make no mistake, if the US can't find those chemical weapons in Iraq, it'll smuggle some in and plant them." -- Phillip Adams
• "The National Library and Archives - a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq - were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat." -- Robert Fisk. Readers were quick to point out that Fisk may have been out by as much as 2,000 degrees.
• "At the first moment, with support of other coalition forces, our people crossed the border into Iraq and made a significant dash by night to our operating area. On the way we encountered several dozen Iraqis, whom we dealt with." -- Australian General Peter Cosgrove
• "Media Watch is wrong, Media Watch knows that it is wrong, and Media Watch's viewers know that Media Watch is wrong." -- me getting it wrong, wrong, wrong
• "I hope you die you c---. I notice you daily blather of bile and shite gob right wing evil crap has disappeared. I hope it is because you are terminally ill with a painful debilitating disease which will kill you slowly and spread to all those dear to you." -- a contented reader
• "I was wrong about the war." -- Hardball host Chris Matthews
• "I was just following orders." -- Iraq air defence force commander Muzahim Sa'b Hassan al-Tikriti
• "It's not healthy." -- Ted Turner believes too few people own too many media organisations
• "He's my man; he was great." -- George W. Bush is a Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf fan
• "He was very passionate. He had learned some Spanish and he would say things like, 'I adore your body', and, 'You make me fly like a bird when I touch you'." -- Judy Lonchan Lopez, George Galloway’s Cuban love toy
• "Dyareckon he would take that view if the personal blog was filled with 'My boss is God. He is the bestest boss. Lovelove for Boss.'?" -- the Wogblogger on a Hartford Courant editor who banned a journalist from blogging
• "APRIL 28, IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY YOU LOSER!" -- a sign placed next to a donkey in Iraqi on Saddam Hussein's 66th birthday
• "If we have used the word 'liberate' in our own journalism, as in 'such and such a place had been liberated by allied forces', that's a mistake." -- the BBC’s Mark Damazar lays down the law
• "Twenty-five pieces is not the same as 170,000." -- Colonel Matthew F. Bogdanos corrects a certain "looted museum" rumour
• "I was wrong. The flag that was draped over the statue of Saddam did not come from the Pentagon." -- me, to Media Watch
• "There's only one solution to preventing him taking the civilised world down his own private S-bend - take him out immediately; one bullet through the forehead at point blank, and all of a sudden the gene pool will be that little bit cleaner." -- a contributor to The Sydney Morning Herald’s online forum
• "Only the state can buy the things that make people happiest.” -- The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee
• "Iraqis of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions were liberated by young men and women who came from the other side of the world -- from California and Wyoming, from New York, Glasgow, London, Sydney and Gdansk to risk their lives, and for some to die, so that my people can live in dignity." -- Iraqi poet Awad Nasir
• "We don't want biased news over here." -- editorial, The Guardian
• "Not so long ago, I dreaded this. And now, I have to admit, I was wrong." -- The Age’s Joanna Murray-Smith revises her opinion of the war
• "Fuckin' no-brainer, kid." -- Dennis Miller responds to a fan’s comment on his support for George W. Bush
• "Australians, Americans, whatever - they are all white people." -- Bali bombmaker Ali Imron on his intended victims
• "My favourite spectator sport is watching people who should know better searching for something (and often claiming to find it) where it never could be. Women claiming to find feminism in Islam is a good one." -- Julie Burchill
• "There was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking - how to put it? - really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly 'hot,' as in virile, sexy and powerful." -- the WSJ’s Lisa Schiffren
• "It's a huge black eye." -- Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, on a scandal involving a black reporter who may have been hired because he was black, promoted because he was black, and whose errors may have been overlooked because he was black
• "WHO the F-CK is that man? He's a f-cking traitor. Get his ass off the stage. Oh, F-CK him. Who IS that fat f-ck anyway?" -- Joan Collins critiques Michael Moore's Academy Award speech
• "Yesterday's budget continues the trend to turning Australia into a less caring and sharing society, into a country of individuals." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin
• "The Government should introduce programs to help all those unfortunate enough to possess arts degrees ... Re-education cafes could be set up with courses in basic psychology, science and economics. We need cheap, large-type anthologies of Adam Smith to show the baby boomers there is life after Noam Chomsky." -- The Daily Telegraph’s Michael Duffy
• "The other day they burned a Walgreens Drug store because the candy aisle had Pixie Stix. Why, you ask? Because they rhyme with Dixie Chicks! That's how bad it's gotten." -- James Lileks
• "Palestine, the home of the Jessica Lynch family, is not 'a hellish war-torn wasteland filled with a million stories of pain and suffering at the hands of murderous Zionists.' It is a small farming community in West Virginia." -- Randal Robinson tries his hand at a New York Times-style correction
• "The people who run the New York Times are insane. Really insane, like those bums who stagger down the street making chicken noises while their filthy pants slide ever downwards." -- Ken Layne
• "It has always been easy to oppose a war, but this time I realised that people were really suffering under [Saddam]. I've been in the German prison camps, and you could fit all of the combined concentration camps just into Abu Ghraib." -- former opponent of the war George Gittoes changes his mind after visiting Iraq
• "My first car was a doggy doo-doo brown 1972 Ford Pinto - the model US consumer advocate Ralph Nader infamously dubbed 'unsafe at any speed.'" -- The Australian’s Susan Maushart doesn’t know her Pintos from her Corvairs
• "Only last week George W. Bush was boasting that al-Qaeda was on the run, 'not a problem any more'." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton recycles Maureen Dowd
• "They come here, people such as Americans, the Jews and their allies. They want to colonise, not just to play. They want to control Muslim people. They make us weak and they take our people to bars." -- Bali bomber Amrozi
• "When OJ Simpson was chased through Los Angeles, it was in a Lincoln Navigator." -- The Guardian’s Gary Younge doesn’t know his Navigators from his Broncos
• "You tell the big lie by carefully selecting only the small, isolated truths, linking them in such a way that that advance the bigger lie by painting a picture inside the viewer's head. The Ascended High Master of this Dark Art is Noam Chomsky." -- Bill Whittle
• "Bin Laden's upbringing in Saudi Arabia as one of 50 children of a wealthy Yemeni builder, his brief dalliance with a western life, his discovery of piety, his growth as a leader and finally his turn to anti-western terrorism, all add up to a great story." -- the SMH’s Bernard Zuel
• "Surprised to see you crawl from under the debris so quickly." -- ever-charming Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy
• "Gun, gun for you. Don't forget (this is a) terrorist country. Life for life. Soul for soul. I am a killer for you.” -- Bali bomber Imam Samudra
• "I'm a symbol of is what's wrong with The New York Times. And what's been wrong with The New York Times for a long time." -- Jayson Blair
• "This eulogy owes nothing to artifice or chance. It has ripened inside me since childhood. From the bottom of my pockets, stuck to the back of my smock, hidden in the corner of abacuses, poetry gushed out." -- French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin
• "[Robert Byrd’s] admirable background stands in splendid contrast to the slippery neo-conservative spivs and silver-spooners who infest the Republican Administration of George W. Bush." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton, forgetting that Byrd’s admirable background includes membership of the KKK
• "When Amrozi himself explains he just wants Westerners ‘finished’ for something as trivial as drinking in a bar on a Hindu island, or for being Jewish, then it's time to stop negotiating and start shooting." -- the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt
• "Australia joined in separating East Timor from Indonesia." -- one reason why Bali bomber Imam Samudra hates Australia
• "I'm from Chicago." -- Donald Rumsfeld explains why he doesn’t get modern dance
• "I'd do Tim just to say thanks for all of his Margo Kingston posts." -- comment of the year, from Jackie D
• "The Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy." -- Bob Geldof
• "Dickhead. Next question?" -- The Mirror’s Sue Carroll, asked for her opinion on fellow Mirror columnist John Pilger
• "Now that you’ve tasted it, you’re one of them." -- SMH economics writer Ross Gittins, after I drank wine offered by the ABC’s Jennifer Byrne
• "Britain and Australia have public broadcasters that enhance their nation's intellectual climate while the US, lacking a similar body, has hundreds of broadcasters and none worth tuppence." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin
• "I am going to a Regimental Reunion in Wagga Wagga in August - you might like to drop in and explain to the blokes of my Infantry Battalion what you mean by 'lying bastards'." -- Ken Gillett offers an invitation to ABC current affairs boss Max Uechtritz
• "Hatred and aggression and murderous ambitions are ... our friends." -- George W. Bush is put through the Dowdifier
• "The senator seems to think the media's duty in time of war is to fall meekly into line with the government of the day." -- Max Uechtritz and Martin Hirst fall meekly into line with each other, writing the same defence of the ABC
• "I think he should be just taken away, shot in the back of the head and buried in a ditch with just no mark and so basically just wipe him out of existence." -- Randall Lee, whose two brothers and sister-in-law were killed in the Bali bomb attack, on Imam Samudra
• "I know you are Irish, but what is your question?" -- Professor Niall Ferguson, to a "shamanistic poet" who interrupted his lecture
• "Just about the only person criticising Bush in the US media is Sean Penn." -- The Guardian’s Gary Younge
• "I subscribed to your newspaper for 22 years. I believed every word and then I learned the truth: that you hire retarded people because of the government programs, and these people are made to write things they did not write, for reasons they did not know. First there is the one boy, then the older man with diabetes, then the 'columnist' who jokes with lies about every little thing, and when would it end?" -- Larry Jonestowne, in a letter to the New York Times
• "George W. Bush, the US President, has used his weekly radio address to again steal his nation." -- ABC radio transcript
• "I was unaware that Byrd had indeed worn the pointy hood for two years from 1942. Plainly, that renders his background considerably less than admirable." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton
• "Associating with Arabs has brought us nothing but shame and heartache." -- Seyf al-Islam Kaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator
• "Hay Bush wepon masterucshin? Their it is weight no just Irak babie no leg." -- Puce
• "I do not see, in the light of those mass graves, how it is now possible to say this war should not have been fought." -- The Age’s Pamela Bone
• "I will not pay. I'll do the time." -- Danish pizzeria owner Aage Bjerre, fined $1200 for refusing to serve French and German tourists
• "People have no respect for bicycle riders." -- English professor and cyclist Luis Rodriguez, scared off the road by North Carolina drivers
• "I'm happy to eat crow." -- Phillip Adams, after museum looting stories were discounted
• "When a rock-tossing amateur athlete can spend less than 15 minutes on the web confirming a writer's humiliating legacy of bias, after reading one of his stories for the first time, then ya gotta know the jig is up." -- Olympic curler George Karrys
• "Media Watch is a program about the media and journalism that promotes a number of principles, including free speech. The phrase ‘nigger in the woodpile’ is a colloquialism, which means a hidden or unacknowledged problem. Some people may feel it's in bad taste, but we wouldn't pick up someone for using the term in context." -- Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy.
• "He’s the only client I ever fired in writing. He was the most difficult human being I’ve ever met. There was no one who even came close. Michael Moore would never withstand the scrutiny he lays on other people. You would think that he’s the ultimate common man. But he’s money-obsessed." -- Michael Moore’s former manager
• "They missed a good opportunity to shut up." -- Silvio Berlusconi, after French criticism of his refusal to meet Palestinian leaders
• "The culture and the values which they will force us to accept will be hedonism, unlimited quest for pleasure, the satisfaction of base desires, particularly sexual desires. Our way of life must be the same as their way of life. Asian values do not exist for them." -- Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad sticks it to the west
• "I was a walking contradiction. Was I a conquering capitalist or a socialist activist? I still don't know." -- deep-thinking Friends star David Schwimmer
• "Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." -- Paul Wolfowitz, as misquoted by Robert Fisk
• "Karl Marx was right: in the end, the politicians in a liberal, capitalist democracy are the messengers, couriers and enforcers for their corporate owners." -- The Age’s Terry Lane
• "Adams has rewritten the information sufficiently so that he isn't using Schuessler's manner of expression." -- Peter McEvoy lets Phillip Adams off the hook
• "I haven't talked about it. People might misunderstand it." -- British Labour MP Ann Clwyd on her secret friendship with the hated American neo-cons
• "You're a f---ing dog, mate, you're going to die, you f---." -- Bali bomb survivor Jake Ryan, to Imam Sumudra
• "I'll chip in on the beers." -- commenter Bryan J., sparking the Jake Ryan Beer Fund
• "I will never forget when one of my cousins actually burst into tears when I said out loud "I am a Republican" at a Thanksgiving dinner." -- blogger Mapchic
• "As a Muslim, I am very glad and proud of what Bali bomb victim Jake Ryan did, even if it breached the official conduct in court. Good on you Jake – that Imam Samudra extremist deserves to be shouted at with the worst of language and even more." -- Shamsul Khairuddin
• "He didn't bother to order anything to eat, he just asked for a VB." -- publican Shane Able, after Benjamin O’Connor walked into his bar following five days lost in the desert
• "Most people probably know what my goal was." -- Louie Zervos, whose sister and two cousins were murdered in Bali, on why he had attended the bombers’ trials.
• "I simply say in relation to the BBC story — it is a lie." -- Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s communications director
• "I accuse John Pilger of cheating the public and favouring a dictator." -- BBC special correspondent John Sweeney
• "With the Imperial War Machine in town this past week, it's been tempting to exercise a democratic freedom and make some lame but satisfying gesture, such as vomiting on a marine's fatigues." -- the SMH’s Malcolm Knox
• "The insider's story of a White House fixed in its ways after the Reagan-Bush years is told with wit and grace ... Some see Living History as the opening shot in the Hillary 2008 campaign. For what it’s worth, I think they’re right and I hope she wins." -- The Australian’s Stephen Romei, on Hillary Clinton’s crap book
• "There's a dork out there running the most powerful country in the world without a qualification to his name." -- Dmitri Piterman, president of Spanish soccer team Racing Santander
• "I'm sure you will find another lab if you look around." -- British professor of pathology Andrew Wilkie, in a letter telling Amit Duvshani that he and other Israelis aren’t welcome at Wilkie’s university
• "He can roll up his sleeves all he wants at public events, but as long as we see that heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain's name on his right forearms, he's never going anywhere." -- Dennis Miller on Howard Dean
• "I don't know how Harry scrubs up at 15 but Judith Torzillo isn't bad for 11." -- the ABC’s Kerry O’Brien
• "In a sense, it's his ignorance that gives him invincibility, whereas his critics, so eloquent and articulate, achieve invisibility." -- Phillip Adams on George W. Bush
• "The media are all over it like flies on pieces of a Hamas bomber." -- blogger Meryl Yourish
• "Could you provide a name(s) of any ancient Australian philosophers or educators pre-200 B.C.?" -- email sent to Australia by a US librarian
• "If you came to Melbourne from Mars, you'd buy the Age out of curiosity but you'd read the [Herald Sun] to find out what's going on." -- an Age staffer trashes his paper in a note to Professor Bunyip
• "In every sense of the word." -- Prime Minister John Howard
• "I teach my students that of course communism must be seen in a negative light, but the goal of Nazism was to kill people, and the goal of communism was to unite them." -- Italian high school teacher Giuseppe Costantino
• "Pastries, all $1! Fresh, healthy, and good for you. Eat up! That should please your cynical heart." -- sign outside a Sydney bakery
• I was harvesting rice the day Mama informed on me
So I continued laboring valiantly to meet my production quota
But before I could draw a giant-letter poster denouncing her
She got run over by a danged old tractor.
-- Paul Zrimsek writes a Chinese peasant-and-eastern song
• "Somehow, Bush manages to balance his reputation as the most belligerent president the US has ever produced with his claim to be a born-again Christian ..." -- somehow, Hugh Mackay was still at this point writing columns for the Fairfax papers
• "She seems to have let quite a few people down." -- a BBC spokesman after reporter Jane O'Brien ran off to marry an FBI agent she met while covering the war in Iraq
• "The Australian Association for the Teaching of English is meeting at the University of Melbourne, and I’m thinking of gatecrashing to tell them what a terrible job they are doing." -- blogger Andrew Norton
• "A lot of us are better off. Our houses are bigger, our cars newer and roomier. Our interest rates are lower, and that's not to be sniffed at. And yet it hurts to see the way John Howard has changed this country." -- the SMH’s Mark Sawyer
• "We want an end to politically conservative appointments to classification boards, so the decisions are made by competent people with no axes to grind and with some understanding of Australia as a country of diverse communities." -- freedom of speech advocates Christina Andreef, Martha Ansara, David Marr, Jane Mills, Margaret Pomeranz, and Julie Rigg demand less freedom of speech
• "With increasing frequency and growing vehemence, you hear people saying they are ashamed to be Australians." -- Hugh Mackay
• "The obnoxious garlic-breathed drunken homosexual concentration-camp bullfighter who's into organised crime." -- Mark Steyn devises a Single European Stereotype
• "He certainly wasn't a leader with 100 per cent electoral approval, as he claimed, but then in a free election he'd still likely have won more votes than the 24 per cent of Americans who voted for George Bush." -- Malcolm Knox, on Saddam Hussein
• "Often things we don't like are in fact good for us." -- Bali bomber Amrozi urges people to look on the bright side
• "Might I offer a couple of small suggestions to those British citizens who would prefer not to stand trial in military tribunals where the punishment for some crimes can be execution? Don’t join terrorist organisations that fly planes at skyscrapers, and don’t dedicate your life to mass murder." -- Stephen Pollard
• "North Korea is carefully monitoring all Australian behaviour." -- Kim Myong-Chol, of the Centre for Korean-American Peace
• "A declaratory policy could be devised based on the threat of retaliation if an attack occurs in the West by nonstate actors using the Arab way of war. In such a circumstance, there could be a strategy of instant, graduated response: nuclear strikes against several of the capital cites of the Middle Eastern nations." -- Australian navy captain Peter Layton
• "I've never felt so proud. I'd do it again." -- an Australian Navy serviceman, just returned from Iraq
• "Does 'ennui' fit the bill?" -- blogger Tim Dunlop seaches for a way to describe reaction to Delta Goodrem's cancer diagnosis
• "How can I carry on writing for a publication I view as contemptible? The answer is that I can't, and I've written to tell them so.” -- Stephen Pollard severs ties with the leftist New Statesman
• "On behalf of many people in Cape York Peninsula including Noel Pearson, I urge you to stay as Prime Minister." -- Cape York Land Council chairman Richie Ah Mat, in a letter to John Howard
• "They want the park, they want open space, they want homeless people, they want community facilities." -- Sydney Greens politician Silvia Hale knows what inner-city residents want
• "She's not saying we deserved this atrocity. She's saying bigots and xenophobes in Asia THINK we deserve it. There's a difference." -- David Marr defends Bali beer blowhard Alison Broinowski, who never said any such thing
• "So they are dead. Or are they?" -- Robert Fisk, following the deaths of Ubie and Queesy Hussain
• "The Goth phase tends to naturally end in the late teens. This is because Goths get tired of constantly being told that they 'look like idiots' and 'are annoying' and 'can't work the Drive-Thru if they keep dressing like Dracula's Knob-wipe'." --Ray Smuckles
• "We almost wouldn't have an industry if we didn't have the regulations we have and I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't be earning a living." -- cultural Hansonite Claudia Karvan wants to protect Australia from awful foreigners
• "The secret of Howard's success is, as always, his enemies. No one likes a bully, and the cowardly, unimaginative pack-bullying practised by what passes for intelligentsia in urban Australia, whether they are writers, artists, academics, journalists, John Hewson or Paddington wives, whether you call them the left, or elites, as David Flint has in his new book, is particularly repugnant." -- the SMH’s Miranda Devine
• "Come on, gobble, gobble." -- J-Lo
• "Every day, on my way to the theatre, I pass the General Motors headquarters in Fifth Avenue." -- Phillip Adams shifts GM’s HQ from Detroit to New York
• "They are all very gifted storytellers, or full of crap. Depends on how you look at it." -- my sister, on the Irish
• "We have been destabilised by too many changes coming too quickly; we're tired of 'issues', disappointed in our leaders and disturbed by our own sense of powerlessness ... we have taken refuge in the celebration of our ordinariness, our normality, our domesticity ... we're scared, so we've switched off." -- Hugh Mackay, losing his mind
• "You'd need some DNA. There’s a good way to do it. Take a machete, and whack off his head, and you'll get a bucketful of DNA, so you can see it and test it." -- CIA veteran Cofer Black explains how Osama bin Laden might be identified
• "As we now know, almost everything we were told about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was false." -- Fairfax columnist Robert Manne
• "Guts, limps, spots, humps, corns, boils, scars, tics: these are marks that distinguish the species." -- Lloyd Evans on British socialists
• "Canadians can't quite believe it: Suddenly, we're interesting." -- Naomi Klein
• "Coming to Baghdad has helped me to confirm in my own mind we did our job properly and that the whole effort was worthwhile." -- Coalition bombing advisor Major Penny Cumming
• "If I had been in the president's place I would not have gotten the chance to resign. I would have been lying in a pool of my own blood, looking up and listening to my wife ask, 'How do you reload this son of a bitch?'." -- Congressman Dick Armey, whose comment was declared "quote of the year" by the SMH’s Peter FitzSimons. Armey spoke those words in 1998
• "What the hell are those vehicles? They look like the footstools you'd stand on so you could reach the running board of a real automobile." -- James Lileks reacts to Chris Textor’s range of possible car purchases
• "Here is my porn collection. Here are my divine sex toys and my lubricants and my leather strappy things and my collection of happy open-minded perversions and my active account at Blowfish.com and my tattoos and piercings and love of massage oil and vibrators and things that go ooooh in the night. Come on over, Mr. Ashcroft, I have something to show you." -- SF Chronicle self-abuser Mark Morford
• "'Whats the matter, Mr squaresville? Am I FREAKIN YOU OUT!?' You certainly would be, dipshit, if it was 1957." -- commentator Amos responds to the above
• "Let's shoot Sharon, Bush, Blair, and Howard instead. We would all be so much better off believe me." -- Mikey F's contribution to The Age's Your Say page
• "Arnold, Arnold." -- chant that greeted Arianna Huffington at the launch of her California governor campaign
• "Buy wiping out Israel and dooming millions of Jews into the sea in one gigantic push, you the Palestinians will Dumbfound Western leaders by collapsing 'Israel' in a couple of days." -- message at the taxpayer-funded Virtual Palestine website
• "Somewhere along the line, the idea took hold that, to be an intellectual, you have to be against it, whatever it is. The intellectual is a negator. Affirmation is not in his or her vocabulary." -- Jean Bethke Elshtain
• "You should remember what was done by Australia and its allies over two years, or do you agree with the aggression against East Timor, that removed it from Indonesia." -- Bali bomber Imam Sumudra. Well, do you, John Pilger?
• "They give me books here and I am held in a clean place. The food is tasty. I want for nothing but freedom. Good people are sat around me." -- Gitmo resident Andrei Bakhitov
• "One time I had a girlfriend dress up as a grateful homeless woman. That was one of the hottest nights of my life." -- Ray Smuckles
• "Despite all our differences, we have to learn to sing the same songs, in tune and in harmony." -- Phillip Adams opposes diversity
• "After a couple of miserable terms, a few of us ambushed the bully and gave him what's what. He sobbed, abdicated power, shook our hands and the playground became a better place." -- pacifist Richard Neville failed to learn from his childhood lesson
• "The negative media portrait of the situation in Iraq doesn't correspond with what I've seen. Indeed, we were treated as liberating heroes when we arrived four months ago, and we continue to enjoy amicable relations with the local populace." -- US Marine John R. Guardino
• "Don't be afraid. Just bring the pen down here, then across here, and he's finished." -- Fuad Hussein assists teachers crossing out images of Saddam in Iraqi schoolbooks
• "A public already panicked by the war on terror will be conned and wedged into a debate that we don't need to have – and shouldn't be having." -- Phillip Adams opposes free speech
• "In Iraq, we can just kill the bastards." -- Ralph Peters explains the benefits of fighting terrorism abroad, rather than at home
• "I now have second thoughts about opposing the death penalty for terrorists. Why should taxpayers pay for the rent, meals, electricity bills and medical care of a convicted terrorist who kills, maims, destroys and takes away the lives of the innocent?" -- East Timorese foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta
• "Now that rebels are bombing the UN, water mains and oilfields belonging to the Iraqi people, where are all the human shields from Western countries who volunteered to sit on these structures to protect them from the evil Americans?" -- Peter Kennedy, in a letter to The Australian
• "The Herald is one of only a few news organisations to have interviewed members of the resistance." -- Paul McGeough finds a new word for "Ba’athist scum and their death-dealing fundamentalist pals"
• "Education and research are the 'twin-carburettors' of economic expansion." -- Labor’s Mark Latham hasn’t looked under a bonnet for decades
• "That would be the worst tragedy in the history of California." -- Cybill Shepherd looks forward to Arnie’s election
• "Other than the bombs they strap to their chests, I’ve got no idea what makes the Palestinians tick." -- Dennis Miller
• "The Huntington thesis seems to have been remarkably prescient in the light of recent world events." -- extract from the newspaper piece that got ABC presenter Stephen Crittenden suspended
• "These terrorists killed the wrong people. They killed the good people." -- incoming Tasmanian governor Richard Butler, following the bomb attack on the UN’s Iraq base
• "I want to thank the Australian people who supported our cause when they demonstrated against the policies of George Bush." -- Bali bomb builder Sawad
• "Four months after the first US tanks rolled into Baghdad airport, the quagmirists are coming out to play again, having learned no lesson when their dire predictions about the second Gulf War proved to be as foolish as the triumphant pronouncements of Comical Ali." -- SMH columnist Miranda Devine
• "As this is written, a Dixie Chick sits in a dark cell, living on peckings, uncertain of her fate, while Janeane Garofalo hasn't been given the opportunity to co-star in a shit film since literally the start of the so-called 'war on terror.'" -- blogger Emily Jones
• "Defeating the Republican Party is not more important than defeating terrorism. Your enemies are those who are trying to kill you. Make the proper distinctions. Get your priorities straight." -- blogger Michael Totten
• "He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him." -- Iraqi Nadia Jergis Mohammed following the birth of George Bush Abdul Kader Faris Abed El-Hussein
• "Frankly, I don't give a toss what some murderer thinks of my opinions and I'm not particularly inclined to adjust my behaviour according whatever twisted logic such a sicko comes up with. I don't need to ‘bear in mind’ anything terrorists say." -- blogger Tim Dunlop, a few months after writing that we should "consider what role our actions might have played"
• "Be careful eating lunch now today, don't want you choking on a chicken bone do we." -- troll Big Hawk makes his usual point
• "Every fact in the film is true." -- Michael Moore. It’s only the lies that are false
• "Face it Tim you are a fraud to intellectual thought and a chickenhawk in the extreme. You send other people's sons and daughters to fight your wars and call anyone who doesn't agree with you a coward, a traitor or any other term of abuse you can come up with between your endless long lunches." -- Big Hawk, again
• "I've been a member of Amnesty International for nearly two decades, but comparing the relative effectiveness of the methods used for actually DOING something about human rights, I think I'll send my donation next year to the US Republican Party instead." -- Uncle Milk
• "The challenge remains for the big brave Tim Blair to put his big balls where his big mouth his and get down to Pitt St bright and early where he can present himself to the ADF recruiting office and sign up. But of course he won't be doing that, he's got another long lunch to attend to today." -- Big Hawk, yet again
• "Bush was, of course, aided and abetted by the judicial activism of Supreme Court judges appointed by Dad – and the candidate who’d lost the popular vote got the glittering prize." -- Phillip Adams. Contributor J. F. Beck quickly pointed out that Bush Sr. appointed two Supreme Court judges, whose votes cancelled each other out
• "You've got to hand it to those cows, they know how to bag themselves up." -- blogger Natalie Solent
• "The time has come to leave wolves in peace." -- Bill Clinton’s new, suckworthy version of Peter and the Wolf
• "These days, wealth is increasingly uncommon, something to be enjoyed by our visionary business leaders and their fortunate families." -- Phillip Adams, ignoring data that shows wealth in Australia has increased by 40% in the past decade
• "You truly excel yourself Tim. Where's lunch today." -- guess who
• "The President will make a dramatic U-turn on Iraq in a TV broadcast tonight to try to salvage his hopes of re-election amid Americans' growing hostility to the casualties and chaos." -- a prediction from The Guardian
• "If someone needs shooting, shoot him. If someone doesn't need shooting, protect him." -- Major General James Mattis
• "When someone attacks Australia I'll fight, but I doubt Tim will. He'll be too busy pretending how important he is eating lunch." -- still more diet advice from old Horkie
• "Ignorance, self-delusion, free-floating disregard for the facts and an unswerving belief in its own infallibility: such are the hallmarks of today's America." -- The Independent’s Andrew Gumbel
• "They didn't even try to catch them." -- puzzled comedian Ewan Campbell, after he’d pelted an audience with Minties. He later learned the audience was blind
• "The economy has juddered to dead slow, steam hissing from the radiator." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton, days before the ABC reported that "every indicator, every survey, has pointed to an economy building up an impressive head of steam"
• "Simon Crean has painstakingly built a platform for a potentially devastating assault on Howard's fitness for office." -- Margo Kingston. Crean was removed as Labor leader within a couple of months
• "The use of sexual toys to enhance foreplay is permissible on condition that these toys do not cause any harm or contain any forbidden ingredients. Similarly, these toys should not be inserted into the female private part, except in the case of dire necessity." -- The Imam
• "It's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy." -- Thomas "Daniel" Friedman, in The New York Times
• "The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one." -- James Lileks
• "I will avenge these prankdoers, mark my lips, I will smoke these filthy evilsters. Whoever you are, we will catch you. Remember: I never sleep." -- George W. Bush, as quoted in Viz magazine
• "Big money, big Liberal Party politics and big media are trying to get rid of us, of course, by letting Packer take over Fairfax - a media-only company. But we're hanging in there and doing the best job we can for our readers while we can." -- Margo Kingston, pretending she works for Indymedia
• "We have people from every planet on Earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every of people from every planet of every country on Earth." -- terminated California governor Gray Davis
• "He has been a trenchant critic of Bush's ill-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq, with its hubristic, neo-conservative assumptions that America can order the world to its whim." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton praises Wesley Clark, presumbly unaware of Clark’s earlier view that George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt"
• "I do think it would be helpful to get the United Nations in to help write a constitution. I mean, they're good at that." -- George W. Bush finds something for the UN to do
• "Tell George Bush to come and get rid of the mullahs for us." -- an Iranian cab driver, to a "shocked" Canadian
• "What a success not just for Greenpeace but for the people of Mexico. We did it for the campesinos. For the future of the children of Mexico." -- Greenpeace activists after blocking a shipment of GM corn. The vessel returned within hours and successfully unloaded its entire cargo
• "Don't believe those who say they aren't there just because we haven't found them. Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Iraq certainly did have weapons of mass destruction. Trust me. I held some in my own hands." -- Richard Butler, who earlier had said: "We need to know what the facts are to know whether the WMD justification for the invasion was real or not"
• "The MV Cormo Express has become the Tampa of the live sheep export trade." -- The Age’s Michelle Grattan
• "I've known Wes for a long time ... Wes won't get my vote.” -- a ringing unendorsement for the Clark campaign from Retired General H. Hugh Shelton
• "I'm returnin' that Noam Chomsky video you made me rent from you. I only watched like six minutes of it so I guess I should get like at least a partial refund." -- Roast Beef
• "I will smash you like the bug you are." -- an artificial intelligence conversation robot answers the question: "Will Collingwood win tomorrow?"
• "It is worth stating the obvious, so momentous is it: For the first time in almost half a century, Iraq has no executions, no political prisoners, no torture and no limits on freedom of expression." -- Julie Flint, in the Lebanese Daily Star
• "Tim Blair ... is always looking down his nose at working class pastimes like rugby league, the track and club-life. The Australian should not allow people to write about sport unless they know something about it." -- Mark Latham
• "Palestinians regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as major obstacles to peace and have regularly attacked them." -- Reuters
• "Are you sure it’s not a demon?" -- James Lileks, on learning that his daughter had an imaginary friend
• "The frontrunner Democratic candidate for president, General Wesley Clark, revealed last week that he refused requests from the Bush administration to publicly link Iraq with S11 within days of the attack on the World Trade Centre because there was no evidence of a link." -- Margo Kingston. The revelation to which she refers was from last June rather than "last week", and was denied by Clark in August
• "The US line on defending Australia remains the same, and our efforts in Iraq have not changed it. In Sydney on August 13, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made that clear, saying 'your system is yours to defend'. If there were a future problem involving Indonesia, he added, Australian leadership would be 'essential'. In other words, unless American interests are threatened, we're still on our own." -- Alison Broinowski, twisting Armitage’s speech beyond recognition
• "Abbott is a good man to fix up messes and make new policy work ... If he gets it right - and Howard will back him with big bucks - Abbott could clean-up his image and restore his appeal as a future leader." -- Margo Kingston, reversing her view in August that "Tony Abbott has just said goodbye to ever being Prime Minister ... the Australian people will never trust Abbott again"
• "As we know, the White House has essentially an oil regime in power, and the OPEC governments were very opposed to Kyoto." -- Jeremy Leggett, unbiased expert, during an ABC interview
• "This channel will promote a French vision that is more necessary than ever in today's world." -- French Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin announces his nation’s answer to Fox and CNN. Reader Mark from Monroe’s suggested name for the new network: "Le Jazeera"
• "Mary, help!" --General Wesley Clark
• "In front of us right now is the greatest leader Australia has ever had and the greatest leader in the world." -- Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, on John Howard
• "Do you have a favorite store in Kabul? Maybe the best prices, range or service. Let us know & we will let others know as well!" -- Kabul’s ARMAN FM
• "Herald staff shall avoid any prominent activity in partisan public causes that compromises, or appears to compromise, the journalist or the newspaper." -- the Sydney Morning Herald’s code of ethics, apparently unread by Margo Kingston
• "All eyes were on the newest runner - former general Wesley Clark. Anticipation mounted. And a few moments into the general's speech there was an almost audible sigh of relief from the hundreds of party faithful in the audience. That sigh said one thing - here was a man who could indeed beat Mr Bush in the presidential race." -- the BBC’s Jonathan Marcus, detecting inaudible voting signals
• "We'll get the bastards who did this." -- John Howard, to Phil Burchett, stepfather of Bali bombing victim Jared Gane
• "Instead of rounding up suspicious Arabs, why don't we say, 'Oh my God, a multi-millionaire killed 3,000 people! Round up the multi-millionaires! Throw them all in jail! No charges! No trials! Deport the millionaires!!'" -- millionaire Michael Moore
• "I am also sure that upon hearing the news, Al Franken spronged sufficient wood to knock the table over." -- James Lileks, on Franken's likely response to Rush Limbaugh's drug hobby
• "Cancun. The World Trade Organisation. Free trade. It's too hard. That's how the big players like it - too complex for us poor sods who have to wear the pain and surrender our democratic rights in its service and so secretive we're don't get the chance to work it out even we we wanted to." -- Margo Kingston
• "Five thousand years ago, Moses said, 'Hitch up your camel. Pick up your shovel. Mount your ass. I will lead you to the promised land.'" -- ancient joke John Kerry revives an ancient joke
• "Yes, Hussein was a monster, but ..." -- Phillip Adams
• "WEll it just shows how ridiculously stupid americans are it bad enough chosing a retarted president who is a pupet but now they go a chose a movie star when will that country learn and then they wonder why the world hates them???" -- Peter Pritchard, in the SMH’s online forum
• "Schwarzenegger, who, like Hitler, is a native of Austria ..." -- CNN
• "Women supported him, which is amazing." -- University of California professor Elizabeth Garrett analyses Arnie’s vote
• "The excuse used by Bush, Blair and Howard to invade Iraq was the imminent threat posed by Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. This claim now appears to have been untrue." -- The Age’s Kenneth Davidson, whose claim about the claim is untrue
• "Listen, friends, you have to face the truth: you are never going to be rich. The chance of that happening is about one in a million." -- Michael Moore
• "Americans are stupid and uninformed. This is very important because in order to win we must understand the way the average American thinks. I'm afraid WE have nothing in common with them." -- poster at Democratic Underground
• "CNN? Oh, that's that network with Larry King, who, like the Son of Sam, is a native of Brooklyn. Used to be owned by Ted Turner, who, like the Cincinnati Strangler, is a native of Cincinnati. Now part of Time Warner, founded by the Warner Brothers, the oldest of whom, Harry Warner, like many Auschwitz guards, was a native of Poland." -- Mark Steyn
• "A died in the wool left-winger". -- The Age farewells dyed in the wool lefty Jim Cairns
• "It seems to me that most of the response is essentially media and Government-generated hype. An example of collective self-indulgent narcissism." -- Age letter-writer John Forth, on the anniversary of the Bali attacks
• "The Australian Government's enthusiasm for al-Ghozi's death bordered on the ghoulish." -- the ABC’s Greg Jennett is offended at reaction to a terrorist’s offing
• "He is obviously well enough to keep fighting the good fight." -- the ABC’s Peter Cave reassures listeners about Yasser Arafat’s health
• "This government frightens and outrages me. I smell Nazism every day." -- Webdiary reader K.E., in an email to Margo Kingston
• "Next year I'm publishing a collection of essays, columns and cartoons about the Bush Administration. I'm entertaining several possible titles, but to tell the truth I'm none too thrilled about them. That's why I'm turning to you for help." -- Ted Rall. Among reader suggestions:
Point and Laugh: The Fine Art of Making Fun of Widows
BUSH STOLE THE ELECTION: and Karl Rove Keeps Moving My Furniture While I'm Away
Scribbly Scribbles and the Scribbling Scribblers Who Scribble Them
Daddy? Where Did You Go, Daddy? How the Trauma of Parental Abandonment Robbed Me of the Ability to Draw Faces, Hands, and Pretty Much Anything Else
Everybody Dies: So Shove Your Grief Up Your Ass, I'm Making Money and Screwing Hairy Uptown Chicks
The Pleasure of My Company: A Fantasy by Ted Rall
• "Those 'amendments' did not originate with me, and I should not be credited with them." -- James Randi, after his friend Phillip Adams had credited them to him
• "Well, it must be his charisma. He married well, and he's smart." -- George W. Bush explains John Howard’s popularity
• "They invented and successfully promoted socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others." -- Malaysian Prime MinisterMahathir Mohamad, on those wily Jews
• "I'll be speaking and signing books at next week's Vegas Valley Book Festival in Henderson, NV, a stone's throw from Sin Strip." -- Ted Rall. Observed reader Scott H.: "He seems to be mixing up 'Sin City' and 'The Strip' into some mutant hybrid. Can't wait for his trip to New York: 'The Apple that Never Sleeps'."
• "They're creating a world in which they wield absolute power. In America, George's thugs are making sure of that by rigging the voting system with the help of his big corporate mates." -- Margo Kingston
• "We have got to free our minds to use the brains." -- Margo Kingston
• "I want a new liver." -- James Lileks
• "As far as Muslims are concerned, it makes no difference because it is not a religious breach whatsoever. It might be a breach of local health requirements, but they should do more homework on halal dietary laws before they do this." -- Mohamed El-Mouelhy, chairman of the Halal Certification Authority, after animal rights activists fed pork to sheep in a bid to render them unsuitable for export to the Middle East
• "A growing proportion of the media are behaving as propagandists, not as journalists." -- Margo Kingston
• "Ultimately it comes down to this: splitting the nation in two and picking up the bigger half." -- Craig Emerson, Australian Labor Party spokesman for industrial relations, attempts to define wedge politics
• "We treat these people with scorn and contempt." -- Foreign Minister Alexander Downer responds to an al-Qa’ida threat
• "The Australians paid the price for the alliance with Bush in Bali." -- Robert Fisk has never heard of East Timor
• "We really do need our own stories for our own wellbeing as a nation, and in order to keep us what we are." -- David Williamson, slave to the status quo
• "In their terminal irrelevance, the depraved left has now adopted the old slogan of Cold War realpolitik: like Osama and Mullah Omar, Saddam may be a sonofabitch, but he's their sonofabitch." -- Mark Steyn
• "Film stars are notoriously ill-educated and ignorant - their opinions are worthless." -- P.P. McGuinness
• "I think Islam has had a really positive effect on my life. It's made me more tolerant, more philosophical and much more calm. I feel far healthier and more confident." -- former Sunday Express reporter Yvonne Ridley, who converted to Islam after being imprisoned by the Taliban
• "The US Government and its lackeys have become the lackeys of Zionist Jews and extreme Christians.” -- Jemaah Islamiah spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir
• "Consider the reality of the woman at whom one is gazing. If she does not groom herself or apply perfume for one day, she will look dreadful and stink." -- The Imam
• "It's really unfortunate that we share a language with them, because it makes it so much easier for them to take over." -- Australian television actor John Wood on the imperialist Americans
• "Mark Latham as leader of the federal Labor Party? That would be a diverting nine months." -- NSW Premier Bob Carr
• "It is probably no exaggeration to say that the invasion of Iraq amounts to the greatest act of aggression by any Western nation since the days of Hitler's Germany." -- John Valder
• "Who is Mark Latham, and what does he stand for?" -- Mark Latham
• "The Light of Freedom cannot be extinguished as long as it is inside of us." -- Dennis Kucinich
• "Nearly everyone who meets Latham is immediately impressed by him. He has gravitas. He knows what he thinks and says it. And as everyone recognises now, he has passion." -- Craig McGregor, in the SMH
• "The key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran." -- cold warrior Howard Dean
• "The bones in the mass graves salute you, Avenger of the Bones." -- Iraqi blogger Alaa
• "He looks like a chimp. He grins like a chimp, pouts like a chimp, walks like a chimp and even talks like a chimp would if chimps could talk." -- Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell disses the Avenger
• "He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of history and of politics. He's brilliant and I really feel that he just has a wonderfully penetrating, inventive mind and I was thrilled that he now is going to be the leader of the Australian Labor Party." -- Dick Morris on Mark Latham
• "They tell me he's one of those genetically-modified because of the criminal ancestry he derives from." -- Robert Mugabe on John Howard
• "The president never took a knife to the bird he held for the cameras. It may not even have been edible." -- The Guardian
• "As I write, Kim Beazley has the numbers and the game looks over." -- Margo Kingston
• "What on earth was the man who called John Howard 'an arselicker' of George Bush doing on Thursday grovelling before the American flag? Why did our new, very green alternative prime minister feel the need to humiliate himself so publicly? ... I mean, what a grovel? What a truly snivelling statement three days into the 'new dawn' of Labor's 'new beginning'?" -- SMH grouch Alan Ramsey
• "As George W. Bush sinks slowly in the West ..." -- Phillip Adams, in the same week that Bush's job approval rating rose to 61%
• "Violence towards one person is violence towards all humanity ... we need to address it on an individual level." -- Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett
• "He must fully realise right now his own natural and easy response to our future responses to feeling his intimacy with him." -- Robert Bosler on Mark Latham
• "The bird was the kind of model used by butchers and Hollywood set-dressers." -- turkeygate conspiracist Mark Lawson, in The Guardian
• "There is a large, seething majority out there against what Bush is doing to this country. This administration is as fundamentalist as the Islamics." -- Vanity Fair publisher Graydon Carter
• "You should be fired and turned into a hobo ... I hate you nin hundred zillion plus one." -- letter from a Melbourne student to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone
• "We have to get this piece of living, breathing s - - - out of the office." -- comedian Judy Gold on George W. Bush
• "I'll be in Washington on January 20, 2005 when President Dean is inaugurated. This is a must do for me. It's not a nice to do, it is a must do!" -- SMH Webdiary contributor Harry Heidelberg
• "The man most likely to be the next US president." -- SMH book reviewer Megan Gressor, on Wesley Clark
• "Most of the leftists I know are hoping openly or secretly to leverage difficulty in Iraq in order to defeat George Bush. For innumerable reasons, including the one I cited earlier, I think that this is a tactic and a mentality utterly damned by any standard of history or morality. What I mainly do is try to rub that in." -- Christopher Hitchens
• "I'd better call my lawyer." -- George W. Bush, following suggestions that banning Germany, France, Russia and Canada from bidding for Iraqi contracts might violate international law
• "We now learn Howard took this country into war at the bidding of a US President who makes a complete goose of himself by 'feeding' American troops in Baghdad a plastic Christmas turkey. Yes, really." -- Alan Ramsey, the Sussex St Gobbler, in the SMH
• "You guys are utter filth. May the lot of you rot in hell. You are fat, bloated and fucked, rotting with smugness. I hope the shit you people peddle returns to you in spades. Enjoy your ignorant lives. Wallow in them. You'll die like everyone else and i hope its in a very lonely place." -- jolly troll Miranda Divide
• "Saddam Hussein has gone. But so has sanity in international affairs.” -- Phillip Adams
• "I actually spoke in an African-American church yesterday." -- Howard Dean
• "I don’t need you, and even if I did, I won’t ask your help, we’ve had enough of it. Go somewhere else, go to Africa, and relieve your conscience by donating some pennies to the poor, starving people there, and don’t bother how their dictators will use the money, and don’t even bother asking why they are so poor. I will stay here and fight for freedom and democracy with the good and brave Americans (yes..the good and brave.. Eat your hearts), and with all the honest soldiers and people of the coalition." -- Iraqi blogger Omar, to opponents of the war
• "I'm not sure that I know about that specific episode, that demonstration that you just referred to." -- New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent Steven Weisman didn’t know about the anti-terror marches in Iraq
• "I was not aware of that." -- neither did NYT Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman
• "Ladies and gentleman, we got him." -- Paul Bremer
• "Death to Saddam!" -- Iraqi journalists viewing tape of the captured beardo
• "I had a horrible feeling in my stomach when I saw that Hussein had been captured." -- poster at Democratic Underground
• "We are very, very happy. I hope they strip the meat from his body and cut into small, small pieces." -- Sakina al-Amein, who left Iraq for Australia 14 months ago
• "2003 came to us dressed as a salesman, ladies and gentlemen. Not the harmless salesman selling us the harbour bridge, it was a deceptive salesman, a dangerous salesman because it wasn't selling us the harbour bridge, it was selling the desert of Iraq. The salesman came all dressed the part but it came selling the desert of Iraq." -- Webdiarist Robert Bosler, jabbering
• "Until the outbreak of the war against Iraq, the strongman sent millions of dollars to Palestinians killed in the conflict with Israel." -- the ABC’s Jane Hutcheon is referring to suicide bombers
• "President Bush sends his regards." -- US soldiers answer Saddam Hussein’s request: "I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate."
• "It was a prop turkey, a pretend turkey. Just as ketchup replaced blood for violent scenes in movies, and mashed potato substituted for ice cream in Happy Days (to prevent its melting under the studio lights), the President had taken a plastic turkey - one used for gourmet magazine shoots - to the mess hall." -- Phillip Adams, making it up as he goes along
• "December 17 2003 is the centenary of the world's most effective killing machine." -- The Guardian’s George Moonbat curses flight
• "When I saw the close ups of the tyrant I thought of his accessories, did you?" -- Margo Kingston
• "Saddam is in our jail." -- a US soldier answers chants of "Saddam is our hearts!" and "Saddam is in our blood!"
• "I would like to express my deep disgust at the recent television coverage of Saddam Hussein undergoing a medical examination." -- SMH letter-writer Michelle Withers
• "The last thing we expected was to be the first to publish anything about the protests. It felt both good and awful at the same time. Good for scooping Reuters, AFP, AP, and other wire services and media stations. And awful for the people that depended on these services for their news. I'm telling you there were reporters from every station in the world at the demos that day and yet only a few mentioned them at all." -- Iraqi blogger Zeyad
• "Fear grips that proportion of the Iraqi people that doesn't necessarily support the resistance." -- the SMH’s Paul McGeough
• "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid." -- Col. Gaddafi, in phone call to Silvio Berlusconi
• "In his public life he opposes border protection, safe in the knowledge that asylum seekers are unlikely to settle near his Paddington terrace. In his private life, however, he is a strong supporter of laneway protection, even to the point of preventing a 90-year-old woman in a wheelchair from accessing his property so that she might have Christmas lunch with her son." -- Mark Latham, on Phillip Adams
• "And now this week, for the Americans at least, some good news – the capture, unharmed, of a beaten, dishevelled Saddam Hussein." -- the ABC’s Hamish Robertson
• "Dubya secretly flew to Iraq a few weeks back to spend 2.5 hours pretending to serve a fake, inedible plastic turkey." -- Mark Morford joins the turkey team
• "Only someone who believes that the end justifies the means will think the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam's murderous dictatorship, the creation of a democratic state in Iraq, or even the flowering of democracy in the entire Middle East, will justify the killing of tens of thousand of Iraqis." -- academic Raimond Gaita
• "To broadcast the scene as a humiliated and broken old man was being so personally examined by an American doctor shows abuse of power and absence of compassion." -- SMH letter writer
Judy Finch
• "I hear that one of Saddam's main torture techniques involved giving the victim a standard medical exam and then showing it on TV." -- reader dang
• "I would say to the Europeans, I pledge to you as the American president that we’ll consult with you first. You get the right of first refusal on the security concerns that we have." -- Wesley Clark
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
So, we’ve made it through another year ... which is more than Ebay or Qwerty Hussain can say. Highlights of 2003: taking Baghdad within three weeks (very impressive, considering all the quagmires); the accelerated unravelling of the far left; new media in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the Paris Hilton video.
Lowlights: taking three weeks to get through airport security; the accelerated morphing of the far left into an anti-trade, anti-liberty authoritarian right; old media in Sydney and London; and most everything about Paris, France.
Anyway, Merry RamaHannuKwanzMas to all, especially to Andrea Harris for hosting this site, and readers who’ve contributed stories, tips, and cash. Without you, I’d be ... well, I’d be doing much the same thing, except the posts wouldn’t be as interesting, and I’d be poorer.
Here’s to further entrenching the global hegemon in 2004. Party on, hegemonsters!
-- Tim