Verbatim

Monday, Jun. 28, 2004

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"I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"
DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. Secretary of Defense, in a handwritten note on a newly released memo in which he approved interrogation techniques for Guant�namo detainees that included standing for up to four hours. Rumsfeld works at a stand-up desk

"It was an honest mistake, not a deliberate deception."
J. COFER BLACK, U.S. State Department counterterrorism chief, after the Bush Administration revised its tally of last year's terrorist acts upward to show a 5% increase rather than a 4% decrease from 2002

"[W]e open the door of pardon ... to anyone who deviated from the right path and committed a crime in the name of religion."
CROWN PRINCE ABDULLAH BIN ABDUL AZIZ AL SAUD of Saudi Arabia, offering a partial amnesty to Islamic militants who turn themselves in to the government in the wake of a rising number of terrorist attacks in the kingdom

"Not even Steven Spielberg could write a script like that."
HENRIK LARSSON, Swedish footballer, dismissing claims by Italian fans that Sweden and Denmark colluded to shut Italy out of the Euro 2004 quarter-finals by ending their match in a 2-2 draw

"Lucky you hit the bad one."
DAVID BOWIE, British musician, after a lollypop thrown by an audience member hit him in his partially blind left eye during a concert in Oslo

"It's generally on the side of the angels ... It punctures lots of pompous fictions about how the world works."
ROWAN WILLIAMS, Archbishop of Canterbury, on the animated sitcom The Simpsons, prompting the TV show's producers to invite him to lend his voice to an upcoming episode

"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women."
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, California Governor, quoting a line from his movie Conan the Barbarian when asked to describe his governing philosophy