Quotes of the week

 

The contractor is not required to perform perfectly to be entitled to reimbursement.
Rhonda James, US Army Corps of Engineers, which decided to pay Haliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root US$2.41 billion in fees related to war in Iraq, even though the Pentagon earlier found the fees inflated or fraudulent
 
Of course the violations were committed as part of a policy of the state. But it was not one that was orchestrated by the armed forces. It was individuals and groups inside the armed forces that were always accompanied by civilians.
Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, Mexican special prosecutor reacting to a report that blames the Mexican military for a near-genocide in the 1970s and ‘80s in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, scene of the so-called “Dirty War.”
 
I think they’re not as quick to dismiss his bluster as they used to be. The concern in the White House is that he’s moving more quickly than they thought he was able to move.
Michael Shifter, Inter-American Dialogue, on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
 
For the past month, we have been talking about the Hamas honey trap. They will play with us with words and maintain their terrorist orientation.
Ronnie Bar-On, Israeli government minister
 
We got rid of the accursed Saddam only to be replaced by another dictatorship, the dictatorship of Britain, America, and Israel.
Moktada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadr
Army in Iraq
Look, if I were the scheduler, perhaps I’d do things differently. I’ll be the president, we’ve got the scheduler being the scheduler.
George W Bush, US President, about his upcoming trip to India
 
I don’t like them seeing me do my job; I want them to see the end result. It’s perfectly possible to be obnoxious and contentious in there and produce an objective print story.
Ken Herman, Cox Newspapers’ White House correspondent on televised White House press conferences
One of our vehs got brewed up. Let’s go get ’em.
Will MacDonald, Canadian Forces sergeant deployed to Kandahar, after hearing of a rocket attack on a Canadian convoy