No one believes for a moment the embargo will prompt the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam Hussein. - Alexander Cockburn

No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul.

The First Law of Journalism: to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.

A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.