Violence
Iraq
"I stand by the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and remove this threat to American security, this threat to the Middle East, this thorn in the side of any effort to build a different kind of Middle East." -- US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3 October, 2004
"We picked 'The Roof is on Fire' because it symbolised Baghdad being on fire and at the time we wanted it to burn to get Saddam and his regime out. 'The roof is on fire we don't need no water/Let the motherfucker burn! Burn motherfucker, burn!'" -- US soldier commenting on the song that his tank crew played as they entered Baghdad, quoted in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9-11 , released June 2004
"Every justification or rationale that we have ever offered for going to Iraq has been bogus. There were no weapons of mass destruction there. There have been no links established between Saddam and international terrorists. And then the notion that we're going to bring democracy to Iraq is -- we'll see if that comes to fruition, but I don't think we'll see it, unless it's convenient to America's agenda." -- Jeremy Hinzman, US Army war resister seeking asylum in Canada, December 2004
"We changed our policy in mid-October, deciding not to issue press releases on a casualty because we did not want to aid the enemy in determining the success of their actions." -- Colonel Jenny Holbert, a spokesperson with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, December 2004
"No government can allow terrorists and foreign fighters to use its soil to attack its people and to attack its government, and to intimidate the Iraqi people." -- US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the US onslaught on Falluja, November 2004
"We are aware that prior to a revision in policy last week, an Executive Order signed by President Bush authorised the following interrogation techniques, among others: sleep 'management'; use of MWDs (military working dogs); 'stress positions', such as half squats; 'environmental manipulation', such as the use of loud music; sensory deprivation through the use of hoods. We assume the OGC instruction does not include the reporting of these authorised interrogation techniques, and that the use of these techniques does not constitute 'abuse'." -- On-the-ground commander in Baghdad, in an e-mail dated May 2004, debating the definition of 'abuse' (document released by the FBI)
Palestine
" IDF forces are fighting a very difficult war, day and night against the basest, vilest murderers. You should admire what the IDF has done and understand the difficulties. IDF soldiers are more moral in their operations than any other army in the world." -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in The Washington Post December 2004 after a rush of allegations by human rights organisations that Israeli soldiers wrongfully killed Palestinians and abused corpses.
"These are people that hide in caves, they hide in the dark corners of society, and they use suiciders as their forward army... Sharon is a man who has presided over suiciders, where he has to go to the funerals of women and children because some cold-blooded killer is trying to destroy the hopes of all the people in the region." -- US President George W Bush, speaking to Barbara Walters, December 2003
Killing enemy civilians during war is normal. -- Rabbi Haim Druckman, in a letter to Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, September 2004
"Anything that's mobile that moves in the zone, even if it's a three year old needs to be killed. Over." -- Captain R, an Israeli soldier who repeatedly shot 13 year-old Iman Al-Hams, speaking on a tape recording of radio exchanges between soldiers involved in the incident, November 2004
"It's not a matter of one or two rotten apples in the Israeli military but of absence of deterrent punishment. The punishment they receive if convicted is ridiculous." -- Suhad Saq Allah, of the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem, June 2004
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/723/sc63.htm