Verbatim

“The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists.”
PORTER GOSS, in his first U.S. Congressional testimony as CIA director, on the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq

“Islam should be the official religion of the country and one of the main sources for legislation, along with other sources that do not harm Muslim sensibilities.”
IBRAHIM AL-JAAFARI, leading candidate for Iraqi Prime Minister, on the role of Islam in the new Iraq

“We are still learning about the science of climate change.”
SCOTT MCCLELLAN, White House spokesman, on the Bush Administration’s refusal to endorse the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which went into effect last week

“They don’t get hungry. They’re not afraid. They don’t forget their orders. They don’t care if the guy next to them has just been shot.”
GORDON JOHNSON, director of the robotics program for the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command, on battlefield robots currently being developed by the U.S. military

“The data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking … that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming.”
LARRY SUMMERS, Harvard University president, in a transcript released last week, comparing these groups with women whom he noted were underrepresented in the academic fields of science and math. He has drawn fire for suggesting that innate differencesas well as social factorsmay account for the gender gap

“All contact with the occult and the esoteric is extremely dangerous.”
GABRIELE NANNI, exorcist priest who last week started teaching the first class offered by a Vatican-recognized university to aid priests and seminarians in understanding the occult; guest lecturers will include psychologists and police criminologists