Quotes of the Morning: We Had to Destroy the City to Save It

“There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear ‘bad news.’”
-Nelson Report, January, 2005

“Bush seems a little out of touch and overly optimistic? Maybe he should look at the other side of his little war. You remember that war we were having before the tsunami hit? The one where we were winning and we had just saved the city of Fallujah from the foreign insurgents that had taken it over? Guess what?”
-Skippy

"’It was really distressing picking up dead bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started,’ Dr Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some 60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN.
According to al-Iyssaue, the hospital emergency team has recovered more than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number of men were found in these places and most were elderly.
Doctors at the hospital claim that many bodies had been found in a mutilated condition, some without legs or arms. Two babies were found at their homes, who are believed to have died from malnutrition, according to a specialist at the hospital.
Al-Iyssaue added these numbers were only from nine neighbourhoods of the city and that 18 others had not yet been reached, as they were waiting for help from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) to make it easier for them to enter.
He explained that many of the dead had been already buried by civilians from the Garma and Amirya districts of Fallujah after approval from US-led forces nearly three weeks ago, and those bodies had not been counted.
IRCS officials told IRIN they needed more time to give an accurate death toll, adding that the city was completely uninhabitable.”
- Integrated Regional Information Networks (Reuters), January 4, 2004

“Kind of like Vietnam but on a larger scale. We’ve moved from saving villages by destroying them to saving entire cities that way. And, lest we think that we’re maintaining moral high ground here..”
-Skippy

“Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, intervened directly with Justice Department lawyers in 2002 to obtain a legal ruling on the extent of the president's authority to permit extreme interrogation practices in the name of national security, current and former administration officials said Tuesday.
Mr. Gonzales's role in seeking a legal opinion on the definition of torture and the legal limits on the force that could be used on terrorist suspects in captivity is expected to be a central issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings scheduled to begin on Thursday on Mr. Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general.
The request by Mr. Gonzales produced the much-debated Justice Department memorandum of Aug. 1, 2002, which defined torture narrowly and said that Mr. Bush could circumvent domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.”
-New York Times, January 4, 2005

“You know, I love my country, but there are days that I’m just not very proud of it.”
-Skippy