The Wisdom of Cokehead Hermann Goering

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country."

- Hermann Goering (1893-1946)
President of the Reichstag
Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe


"These [terrorist] attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible, and this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail…The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed."

- George W Bush (1946- )
President of the United States of America
Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces


A gas tanker truck wired with explosives blew up in a west Baghdad neighborhood Friday, killing one person, wounding 19 and lighting up the night sky with a fireball, just hours after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld left the capital.

Rumsfeld's surprise one-day tour in Iraq took him to the cities of Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit and the heavily barricaded Green Zone in Baghdad — he did not visit the Mansour area — and throughout his meetings with U.S. troops, he insisted that the insurgency that plagued the country for months would be defeated.

A few hours earlier in Tikrit, a female soldier complained that she had a hard time explaining what the American military was doing in Iraq when she returned home and asked what could be done to get past the bad press.

Rumsfeld said the message was getting through anyway.

"I think the country does understand that we lost 3,000 people on September 11th and the fact that those people were operating in this part of the world ... You've seen the evil up close and personal, you know the danger that this poses.

"What you're doing is important. I think the American people get it."

Still, violence has escalated even after the U.S. offensive in Fallujah last month that largely captured the guerrilla's main stronghold.

On Tuesday, insurgents in Mosul, a northern city that has become a center for violence, carried out the deadliest yet against Americans — a suicide attack on a mess tent at a U.S. base.