U.S.A.

"Western democracy has grown organically over the centuries, from the village community to the national parliament. To implant it by force in Iraqi society, which is based on the tribe and the extended family (khamulah) and on different concepts and traditions, is a hopeless pursuit."

"A more pragmatic and balanced American administration would have to sit back and take a cold and calculated look at the real world and realize that an Islamic bloc with all its inconsistencies is a region of the world that cannot be colonized or patronized for ever."

"There is no need now for U.S. military presence whatsoever. There is no need for U.S. corporations in Iraq to rebuild the country. Let the Iraq's rebuild their own country. They built it in the first place without U.S. corporations in charge! If the Iraqis want to hire U.S. contractors, let the Iraqis make that decision!"

"If the greatest threat to constitutional freedoms weighs heaviest on the backs of the minority, then a prime candidate for this can easily be found in enemy combatants such as Jose Padilla."

"The President’s cavalcade almost came to grief recently when sophisticated explosive devices blew gaping holes in the bridge the convoy was crossing on its way from Islamabad International Airport to the Army House, the explosion shattering windows in a wide area in the vicinity."

"The world will stand trial with Saddam Hussein, but particularly the Muslim world, since it was on the watch of the secular Muslim governments that nationalists hijacked Islam and state sponsored clerics perverted Muslim thinking and attempted to turn our religion into a racist, and anti-woman religion of hate and oppression."

"...Saddam Hussein was not a threat to the United States - he only aggravated Bush's father, the former president who admitted publicly that he "hates" the Iraqi leader and he refused to abide by the demands of the United Nations. But the United Nations was in the process of responding to Saddam Hussein. Bush couldn't do anything about that, but he could avenge his father's hate."

"I sought a soul in the sea, and found a coral there; beneath the foam for me, an ocean was all laid bare."

- Rumi