Verbatim

"Dick Cheney can be President." GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. President, when asked how Vice President Dick Cheney stacks up against new Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards

"We could take the city, but we would have to kill everyone in it." MOHAMMED ABDULLAH al-SHAHWANI, director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, on the difficulty of putting down a growing insurgency in the city of Fallujah

"People forget it took us 12 years to write our own constitution. It wasn't very pretty around here either between 1776 and 1787." PAUL BREMER, former top U.S. administrator in Iraq, in a TV interview in which he described Iraq's new democracy as "sloppy and messy"

"We know Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but we know we haven't found them ... I have to accept we have not found them, that we may not find them." TONY BLAIR, British Prime Minister, testifying on Iraq's missing biological and chemical weapons before a parliamentary committee

"The pot of gold is pretty much empty right now." ARCHBISHOP JOHN G. VLAZNY, after his Portland, Oregon, archdiocese became the first in the U.S. to file for bankruptcy as a result of sexual-abuse lawsuits against its priests. Claims have cost the archdiocese more than $53 million

"Hollywood wants the ouster of President Bush. He is neither concerned about the people, neither can he connect with them." RICHARD GERE, American actor, describing the attitude of California's entertainment industry toward U.S. President George W. Bush

"Thanks Mr. Secretary, but stick to your day job." The SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, in a headline commenting on U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's performance of the disco hit Y.M.C.A. on the closing day of last week's asean meeting in Jakarta