Not one more death

Verso, Ed., 2006

Harold Pinter: “I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the Job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, wining, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.
“God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget that”.

Richard Dawkins: Whatever anyone may say about weapons of mass destruction, or about Saddam's savage brutality to his own people, the reason Bush can now get away with his lovely war is that a sufficient number of Americans (…) see it as a revenge for 9/11. This is worse than bizarre. It is pure racism and/or religious prejudice, given that nobody has made even a faintly plausible case that Iraq had anything to do with the atrocity. It was Arabs that hit the World Trade Center, right? So let's kick Arab ass. Those 9/11. terrorists were Muslims, right? Right. And Iraquis are Muslims, right? Right. That does it.”

Haifa Zangana: “We are not celebrating. Death is covering us like fine dust”.

Brian Eno: “There are real problems in this world, problems that will need enormous vision and ingenuity and generosity for their solution. The war in Iraq represents the lack of any of these, and the abject squandering of our potential as a civilization”.