Loose cannons

Down the toilet (and into Swiss bank accounts)?

"The [US] Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes." — San Francisco Chronicle, May 18.

Paradise

"I'm hoping to set up and develop something interesting in oil and gas because Iraq, for any oil person, is paradise." — Mikael Gulbenkian, chairperson of the Alberta-based Heritage Oil Corporation and great-nephew of Calouste Gulbenkian, founder in 1911 of the first syndicate — which included BP, Shell and Standard Oil (predecessor of ExxonMobil) — formed to drill for oil in Iraq.

Affirmation of faith

"I don't think there's any doubt that they exist." — Foreign minister Alexander Downer responding on ABC Radio on May 25 to the question, "How long does the coalition need to search for weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq] without success before it can be assumed that they don't exist?"

Confession of ignorance

"We don't know what happened [to Iraq's alleged arsenal of banned weapons]." — US war secretary Donald Rumsfeld, May 28.

Vultures

"This is the sort of garbage that is usually peddled by the media or the vultures as at times I call them." — Liberal parliamentary secretary Warren Entsch responding to criticisms raised after it was revealed on May 27 that Prime Menzies John Howard and four of his staffers had run up a hotel bill of $42,000 during a four-night stay in Rome, and that Howard had bought more than $120,000 worth of fine wines for his official Sydney residence over the past four years.

From Green Left Weekly, June 4, 2003.

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From GLW issue 540