Quotes of the week

They said what?!?  

There is this predicate in our policies that the Cuban system is one that can be pushed over with one finger, and that has not been the case.

Philip Peters, the Lexington Institute, a right-wing Virginia think tank

I find the world just too complex to embrace a single ideological point of view.

Evan Bayh, US senator from Indiana and possible Democratic presidential contender

We differ in that I’d like to exchange guns for books and represent a rupture from this idea that Venezuela, a peaceful country, has to go around confronting the world.

Benjamín Rausseo, candidate for president in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela

We now think in retrospect that the first al Qaeda plot, for instance against this country, preceded by quite a while our intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and preceded 9/11.

John Reid, British Home Secretary

They broke into all the floors, especially the ninth floor, stole some money, which was the salaries of the security workers, and they kidnapped five of our staff. This is a provocation. No day passes by without raids by the Americans against our health institutions.

Ali al-Shimari, Iraqi health minister, about a US force’s raid on a hospital in Baghdad

We were banging out heads against a wall six or seven hours a day. We’d go home at 10 or 11 at night and say ‘tomorrow will be a better day.’ But the next day was Groundhog Day all over again.

R Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state for political affairs, on negotiations leading to a ceasefire in Lebanon

At first we sent the armor in, but the Hezbollah had missiles, so we decided to use the old method on two legs. From the point of view of the individual soldier, they are better than the Arab armies that surround us.

Omri Bar-David, a colonel in the Israeli reserves on the fighting spirit of Hezbollah militiamen

The Bush administration seems to lurch from crisis to crisis covering yesterday’s vulnerabilities but leaving tomorrow’s threats wide open to exploitation by terrorists.

Edward J Markey, congressman from Massachusetts

From the very beginning, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be exploited.

Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist

I wonder if Americans will continue to fall for the political exploitation of their fears of terrorism or if voters will begin to show some awareness of the fact that they have been cynically manipulated.

Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist