"It looks like something you'd see in the Third World. It doesn't seem like New York, America at all" - stockbroker, cited in People, Sept 24 01.
Some of these quotes from the heads of state would be laughable if they weren't said by such powerful people about such a ghastly tragedy.
"Dead or alive"
"We're going to smoke them out of their caves"
"Who isn't with us is against us" (If this is true, Berkeley city council can expect a cruise missile in response to their motion criticizing the bombing of Afghanistan).
"There is no neutral ground" (Of course there is. There are lots of people who support neither the US government nor Islamic terrorism).
"The first war of the twenty-first century" (Bush obviously plans on having more - this isn't one of those 'wars to end all wars' they always used to talk about).
"We will have to deal with unsavory characters"
"cowardly attack"
"This nation will defeat terror wherever we find it across the globe"
"We will plant that flag of freedom forever, by winning the war against terrorism, by rallying our economy, and by keeping strong and adhering to the values we hold so dear, starting with freedom." - the exact opposite of what is actually happening.
"We see the same intolerance of dissent; the same mad, global ambitions; the same brutal determination to control every life and all of life" - Bush, talking about the Taliban, not about his own government
Bush said he didn't know whether Osama bin Laden has nuclear weapons, as the terrorist mastermind claimed in a recent interview with a Pakistani journalist. 'The only thing I know for certain about him is he's evil', the president said.
"He's either dead in some tunnel or he's alive. And if he's alive, he's either in Afghanistan or he isn't."
"Wherever he is, he's not very happy."
"The campaign against terrorism... will increase terrorism"
'I do not agree that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong had been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.' (evidence to the Peel Commission of Inquiry 1937) - Winston Churchill, arguing that the Jews are superior to the Arabs.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.": Lord Balfour, 1917. The U.S. Congress passed a resolution endorsing the Balfour Declaration in Sept 1922.
"To be sure, the 1990s was the decade of communism's spectacular retreat. This called for two cheers. But the world will suffer worse tragedies if the United States and the rest of the Western world, in the twenty-first century, are not more careful about choosing allies". Unholy Wars - Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, John K. Cooley.
"Which was more important in world history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire?" Zbigniew Brzezinski.
"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous". The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli.
"A Republic, not an Empire". Pat Buchanan.
"We see this war as one against the virus of terrorism. If you have bone marrow cancer, it's not enough to just cut off the patient's foot. You have to do the complete course of chemotherapy. And if that means embarking on the next Hundred Years' War, that's what we're doing".
"Just as colonialism heedlessly used the wretched, the poor, the expoloited... European Jews were transformed into the instruments of aggression; they became the elements of settler colonialism untimately allied to racial discrimination... Zionism is an ideology that is imperialist, colonialist, racist; it is profoundly reactionary and discriminatory; it is united with anti-Semitism in its retrograde tenets and is, when all is said and done, another side of the same base coin". Yasir Arafat, Address to the UN General Assembly, November 13, 1974.
"US policy is likely to lead to more terrorism" Bobby Marsh, whose girlfriend died in the attack, on National Public Radio, 27 October, 2001.
www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,586717,00.html - more quotes, phrases and a glossary.
"Nationalism stinks" Gregory Rodriguez, who died in the trade center attack.