Quotes of the Morning: If You Don't Like that Opinion, I Have Others

“Let’s just take a quick look at a few of our recent top stories… First, the very important debate waging on the Spanish version of the national anthem. As an attempt to be fair and balanced, First Lady Laura Bush has come down firmly on both sides of the issue.”
-Skippy

“But asked her opinion Wednesday in a CNN interview, First Lady Laura Bush said, ‘I don't think there's anything wrong with singing it in Spanish.’
‘What people want is it to be sung in a way that respects the United States and our culture,’ she said.
But when it was pointed out that this position differed from her husband's, the first lady had a different answer.
‘Well, I think it should be sung in English, of course,’ she said.
-Associated Press, May 4, 2006

“Hmm… For reason when I read her interviews the word ‘Stepford’ keeps coming to mind, but that’s just me… Now, onward to our hero in Washington. The man with the plan, Donald Rumsfeld.”
-Skippy

“QUESTION: So I would like to ask you to be up front with the American people, why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary, that has caused these kinds of casualties? why?
RUMSFELD: Well, first of all, I haven’t lied. I did not lie then. Colin Powell didn’t lie. He spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence Agency people and prepared a presentation that I know he believed was accurate, and he presented that to the United Nations. the president spent weeks and weeks with the central intelligence people and he went to the American people and made a presentation. i’m not in the intelligence business. they gave the world their honest opinion. it appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.
QUESTION: You said you knew where they were.
RUMSFELD: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and –
QUESTION: You said you knew where they were Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words.
RUMSFELD: My words — my words were that — no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let him stay one second. Just a second.
QUESTION: This is America.
RUMSFELD: You’re getting plenty of play, sir.
QUESTION: I’d just like an honest answer.
RUMSFELD: I’m giving it to you.
QUESTION: Well we’re talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.
RUMSFELD: Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact. QUESTION: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That’s also…
RUMSFELD: He was also in Baghdad.
QUESTION: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital. Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.”
-Questions with Defense Secretary Donald “Rummy” Rumsfeld, May 4, 2006

“Rummy got a little upset when he denied saying he knew where the WMDs were. Let’s go to the playback, shall we?”
-Skippy

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
-Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003

“So it looks like Rummy may have been, well, lying. What do you expect from a man who needs to find a way to backpedal through statements like this?”
-Skippy

"QUESTION: Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?
RUMSFELD: There is no question but that they would be welcomed. Go back to Afghanistan, the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda would not let them do."
-PBS News Hour, February 20, 2003

“This isn’t the first time Rummy has had selective amnesia…”
-Skippy

"But on Sept. 25, - a particularly bloody day in which one U.S. soldier was killed in an ambush, eight Iraqi civilians died in a mortar strike and a member of the U.S-appointed governing council died after an assassination attempt five days earlier - Rumsfeld was asked about the surging resistance.
‘Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very eloquently and you said . . . they would welcome us with open arms,’ Sinclair Broadcasting anchor Morris Jones said to Rumsfeld as the prelude to a question.
The defense chief quickly cut him off.
‘Never said that,’ he said. ‘Never did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of somebody else. You can't find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said.’"
-Hearst Newspapers, November 9, 2003

“Someone get this man some help. A man with such obvious memory problems should not be in charge of the military. He should be in treatment, or a Cheech and Chong movie, but definitely not in the Pentagon.”
-Skippy