May 4, 2003

QOTW

A little bit late with this edition of Quotes of the Week. Let's start with something from the POTUS:

"With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war. Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent." George W. Bush

"I couldn't help but be impressed with Alan Greenspan's testimony Wednesday. He made the obvious point that it's good to cut taxes if you also cut spending. Duh. This administration, alas, is one of the most spend-thrift in recent times and yet still wants massive tax cuts. Thank God for some of the saner Republicans in the Senate. At least some people haven't forgotten that conservatism means limited government, personal privacy and fiscal responsibility, in contrast with the hard right's big government, sex police and mounting debt." - Andrew Sullivan

"The administration gave the perfect response to the United Nations claim that it alone can confer legitimacy on the running of Iraq: We ignored it. It does not even merit a rejoinder. The idea that legitimacy flows from the blessings of France and Russia, Saddam's lawyers and suppliers, is on its face risible. Legitimacy does not come out of U.N. headquarters in New York; it will come out of the ground in Iraq, as more and more factions join in the construction of a provisional government." - Charles Krauthammer

"Too many Europeans still cherish the belief that they are close to an end to war, hunger, want, and meanness — ideals inseparable from a light work week, cradle-to-grave care, protection by an uncouth American military, and a steady stream of fertile, darker, unassimilated peoples to take out their trash and clean their toilets." - Victor Davis Hanson

"Norman Mailer has become Norman Maine, a former matinee idol whom loved ones best keep an eye on, because if this is the best he can now muster, he'll no doubt be walking purposely into the surf off Provincetown any day now. And as Mr. Mailer's prostate gradually supplants his ego as the largest gland in his body, he's going to have to realize, as is the case with all young lions who inevitably morph into Bert Lahr, that his alleged profundities are now being perceived as the early predictors of dementia." - Dennis Miller

Posted by dan at May 4, 2003 11:45 PM