Mike Huckabee: “It is a good thing that the last thing to go through Osama bin Laden’s mind was an American bullet.”
Liberals:
NY Times editorial: “The killing of Osama bin Laden provoked a host of reactions from Americans: celebration, triumph, relief, closure and renewed grief. One reaction, however, was both cynical and disturbing: crowing by the apologists and practitioners of torture that Bin Laden’s death vindicated their immoral and illegal behavior after the Sept. 11 attacks. ”
Singer Sheryl Crow: “It’s just fascinating that we have a black man, who has Muslim ties with his father, even though he’s a Christian, it’s amazing how far our country has come, that that’s the man who took down Osama bin Laden. It makes you feel very patriotic. I do think that if it were any other president, I might feel different about it. But, he’s one of the most conscious [conscientious?] people I’ve ever met, and I’ve met four presidents now. He walks the walk.”
Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, of Osama bin Laden: “I think the viewpoint reflects more of a Neo-Nazi, white supremacist outlook on American whites than anything based in reality.” I honestly don’t know if this guy is referring to Osama bin Laden or to the Navy SEALS who killed him (the headline suggested the former).
Pakistani opposition leader Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan on the killing of Osama bin Laden: “This is the biggest tragedy in the history of Pakistan after the fall of East Pakistan in 1971 (now Bangladesh). heads should roll.”
Al-Qaeda‘s statement confirming Osama bin Laden’s death: “Even when the Americans managed to kill Osama, they managed to do ONLY that by disgrace and betrayal. Men and heroes only should be confronted in the battlefields but at the end, that’s God’s fate.”
Michael Moore on the killing of Osama: “You hate what we stand for, you hate what our constitution stands for [if you favored his being killed]….We should be standing up and saying ‘listen, damn it, we’re Americans. This is the way we do it. You commit a crime, we put you on trial.'”
60 Minutes news correspondent Lesley Stall: “When Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office, you got to think the gods had turned against him, with his double-digit inflation and gas lines. You knew he had lost his mantle of heaven when his helicopter mission to recue the American hostages in Iran failed tragically in a sandstorm.”
President Barack Obama on high gas prices: “We can’t just drill our way out of the problem. If we’re serious about addressing our energy problems, we’re going to have to do more than drill.” Elsewhere, the president has suggested that we remove oil subsidies from the tax code. Now, even the simplest of us recognize that means higher gas prices and not lower. Same for reducing drilling out in the gulf; higher Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneider prices, not lower. No new refining plants? Higher gas prices, not lower.
Obama (joking): “You do not want to be between Michelle and a tamale.”
Claudio Cordone, of Amnesty International: “Amnesty International believes that US forces should have attempted to capture Osama bin Laden alive in order to bring him to trial if he was unarmed and posing no immediate threat.”
Muslim American Society’s Khalilah Sabra: “He [bin Laden] was a visionary who believed in the possibility of an Islamic state in Afghanistan and the possibility that this thing might someday be. There was nothing wrong with that dream, even if it differs from that one that all Americans have here for themselves.”
Alan Colmes: “Celebration in the streets and [shouting] “woo hoo” and [chanting] “USA, USA” is kind of unseemly. I think it’s jingoism.”
Michael Moore: “No, no, they killed him but what I’m saying is they didn’t kill him because there was some kind of firefight or something going on. They went there with the intention to kill him. That’s an execution or an assassination, whatever you want to call it.”
Liberals being civil:
Radio host Mike Malloy: “All the death in Iraq was not caused by bin Laden. The death in Iraqwas caused by George W. Bush. Five thousand Americans, tens of thousands permanently damaged and shot to pieces, a million Iraqis dead – that wasn’t bin Laden. That was George Bush. So when does Seal Unit 6, or whatever it’s called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden. Wasn’t he, or am I wrong here?” Emphasis mine.
Alan Grayson on why President Bush did not go to Ground Zero with President Obama: “I suspect that President Bush might have been passed out drunk the past 3 or 4 days, so I’m not sure if he made any conscious decisions.”
Nancy Peosi at a fundraiser: “House Republicans should be working to help put Americans back to work, not waging an outrageous war against millions of women and their private health decisions…We cannot sit silent in the face of this extremist agenda” This extremist agenda is H.R. 3, which seeks to cut off public funding for abortions.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “If you run out of the government voucher and then you run out of your own money, you’re left to scrape together charity care, go without care, die sooner. There really aren’t a lot of options.” Emphasis mine.
Liberals making sense:
President Obama: “The terrorist leader who struck our nation on 9/11 will never threaten America again. Our strategy is working, and there is no greater evidence of that than justice finally being delivered to Osama bin Laden.”
Crosstalk:
Nancy Pelosi (from a press conference on September 7, 2006): “[E]ven if [Osama bin Laden] is caught tomorrow, it is five years too late. He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But, in fact, the damage that he has done . . . is done. And even to capture him now I don’t think makes us any safer.”
Nancy Pelosi this past Monday: “The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida. . . . I salute President Obama, his national security team, Director Panetta, our men and women in the intelligence community and military, and other nations who supported this effort for their leadership in achieving this major accomplishment. . . . [T]he death of Osama bin Laden is historic. . . .”
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Brian Williams: Can you confirm that it was as a result of water boarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?
Leon Panetta: Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here. It’s a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got. I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.
Brian Williams: So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques — which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years — that includes water boarding?
Leon Panetta: That’s correct.
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Bill O’Reilly: Do you think they should put the pictures out there?
Dennis Miller: Sure — they should be in “The Factor” store. It should be a mouse pad. Are you kidding me?
Moderates:
Glenn Greenwald from 2009: “The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. . . .” (I am assuming Greenwald is a moderate)
Conservatives:
Mike Huckabee: “It is a good thing that the last thing to go through Osama bin Laden’s mind was an American bullet.”
John Yoo: “President Obama can take credit, rightfully, for the success today, but he owes it to the tough decisions taken by the Bush administration.”
Ann Coulter on the dead bin Laden pictures: “We paid for it; we ought to be able to see it.”
Allen West: “This America is rooted in a Judeo-Christian faith tradition, which finds its cornerstone of communication, prayer.”
Marc Thiessen: “We have not interrogated a single high value detainee since Obama came into office.” ]quoted from memory]
ConserValidity (tweet): “We have not captured, detained or interrogated a single high ranking terrorist since Obama took WH. Ended Enhanced Interrogation on his2nd day”
Dennis Miller: “I think the Arab world operates under the same realm of zealotry as the Japanese soldiers did. If you really tell me that you think if we don’t show this picture, guys who are otherwise predisposed to blow up us and use their children to blow us up are going to come around to the table and say, “We’re going to do you a square because we like you now?” That’s dreamland. That’s Alan Colmes land. That’s not the real world.”
Dennis Miller on Osama’s burial at sea: “I think Al Jazeera is putting a new cartoon show on called “Spongebomb Squarepants,” and that’s why they put him down there. I hope they didn’t shave the beard. It will make for a nice coral reef down there. But I don’t think it had anything to do with ceremony. I just think I’ve watched Animal Planet enough to know that this is what seals do with their leftovers. They drop them to the bottom of the sea. And I hope he rots down there until Bob Ballard and Jimmy Cameron dive on him on an IMAX cam and do a PBS special about it on the RMS Satanic.”
Dennis Miller on enhanced interrogation techniques: “you’ve got Colmes and Juan coming on and saying, no, it had nothing to do with that. He broke the night Anna Quindlen came over with tea cakes and scones and then Maya Angelou read some Koranic passages while Enya sang in the background, and that’s when KSM spilled his guts like John Hurt in Alien.”
Rush Limbaugh: “Here’s the bottom line: Pawlenty seemed the most presidential, Santorum seemed hyper and wired up, and Herman Cain made me think I was listening to me.”
Rush Limbaugh: “Have you noticed, by the way, that nobody is demanding any proof that Obama killed the job market and the economy? Now, they’re just demanding proof that he killed Osama.”
Rush Limbaugh: “We’re told that there were three wives in that house in Abbottabad and that none of them left for six years — and they’re accusing us of torture? Come on!”
Rush: “Mr. President, you used President Bush and Cheney’s methods to track and kill Bin Laden. Please use President Reagan’s policies to rescue this country.”
Rush: “Now, follow me on this. Obama ordered an assassination, but he can’t say it. He put us on a path to socialized medicine, but he can’t say it. Bill Ayers was his good friend, but can’t say it. Obama has to hide who he is and what he’s doing, and he is the most transparent president ever.”
Rush: “Let me ask this: If the SEALs had put women’s underwear on Osama’s head, would Obama release those photos?”
Rush: “I cannot suppress a smile every time I read about the ‘mansion’ Bin Laden lived in. Living in the lap of luxury… come on! The place looks like a crackhouse!”
Conservatives not making any sense:
Sen. Lindsey Graham jokingly said that the GOP candidates “are going to come to this state and kiss every part of your body.”
From Conservative Review #177 (HTML) (PDF)
A retired math teacher who spends most of his time exegeting the Old Testament and, once a week, puts out an ezeen.
Cheryl Crowe is a certified ding bat who thinks we should use only one square of TP no matter what number duty we do. This matches her maudlin utterly nauseating. description of The Fraud. Even Jay Leno said he would never shake hands with her.