Flannery O'Connor Quotes

As Secretary of State, Powell was going to address the UN Security Council on the 5th and he was coordinating his speech with the other agencies of the government. His criterion was that he only wanted to make accusations that were backed up by incontrovertible evidence. However, VP Richard Cheney and his aide, Scooter Libby, kept inserting an accusation that Iraq was involved with and supported Al Qaeda. This was one of the many speculations that those who wanted to justify attacking Iraq kept using as Domestic propaganda. When Powell asked for proof or intelligence reports and none could be provided, he removed the accusation from the speech explaining why. However, at the last minute, Cheney and his staff put the accusation back in, and that triggered the quotation. Unfortunately, Powell was so busy fending off totally absurd accusations, that he accepted the CIA assurances {79468} that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons that were about to be operationalized and never heard from those who questioned the credibility of the sources for the basic accusation. Powell had great trust among the diplomats of the world then gave the United States version to the Security Council and justified our coming invasion of Iraq. But the intelligence report, despite the assurances of the CIA and the Vice President, was false and Iraq not only was not close to a nuclear weapon but he had no program at all at that time to try and develop one. Powell resigned and his credibility about the world was ruined as he was then seen as just another lying politician.

Bush followed a tradition of American opposition to conquest. See Henry L. Stimson’s statement on the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

On his trip to Germany, Reagan was invited to lay a memorial wreath at the German military cemetery in Bitberg. His staff assistant Michael Deaver had set the trip up but did not know that German Waffen SS Officers were also buried at the cemetery along with the far more numerous Wehrmacht. American Jews and Veterans Groups protested this honor to the SS murderers of millions of people including American prisoners of war. The proposed trip was covered very heavily by the press and editorials throughout the country called for the President to cancel the cemetery part of his trip. He did not. This quotation shows how symbols can take on a meaning that was never intended by the parties.

At that moment Hoover was the first politician to ever use the then new technology of a Teleprompter. Hoover was video recording a political speech for the Republican Convention. The teleprompter operator had not kept up with his pace of the speech, and with no protocols or other procedures, this quotation is what Hoover said. Hoover, a great engineer before politics was always interested in new technology. When Secretary of Commerce, he was the first politician ever to appear on television.