Randomness incorporated

Asked in Parliament last week about reports of 400 suspect [rendition] flights passing through British airports, Tony Blair said: "In respect of airports, I don't know what you are referring to."
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This time, someone really does have to be fired. The revelation that Defense Department money, not even authorized by Congress for the purpose, has been outsourced to private interests and then used to plant stories in the Iraqi press is much more of a disgrace and a scandal than anyone seems so far to have said. — Christopher Hitchens
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When the Europeans and Canadians proposed [nonbinding] talks [on greenhouse gases] Thursday, chief American climate negotiator Harlan Watson rejected it on the grounds that it would be tantamount to formal negotiations.
"If it walks like a duck and talks like duck, it's a duck," Watson told the other delegates, according to several participants in the closed midnight session.
As Watson walked out, one of the other delegates, baffled, responded: "I don't understand your reference to a duck. What about this document is like a duck?" — Via Apostropher*
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Here’s a news flash for [Andrew] Sullivan: an endless number of people, Americans, Iraqis and others, have suffered genuine agony and injury—and are now dead—because of people like you, and as the direct result of your unquenchable desire for absolute safety, which in your view requires “benevolent American hegemony” exercised over the entire world by means of military force. Never mind that this fatal Utopian delusion has never led to anything other than death and destruction…. — Once Upon a Time
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JIM LEHRER: Some people would say to you, Mr. Secretary, the problem or the reason public opinion has sunk so low is the expectations that the American people had for this war have not been met. Quite the contrary, they didn't expect 2,100 Americans to die. They didn't expect 16,000 to be wounded and they sure didn't expect 1,900 of the 2,100 to die after major combat was ended. So is that part of the problem as well?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Could be.
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*UPDATE More conference fun from Catch.com: "U.S., increasingly isolated, anticipates the heady days of rebound and break-up sex"