Verbatim: Oct. 23, 2006

“In 20/20 hindsight, probably you could do everything a little bit better.”

DENNIS HASTERT, Republican Speaker of the House, conceding that he could have handled the congressional-page scandal more deftly but resisting continued calls for his resignation

“I do not kill women.”

RAMZAN KADYROV, Prime Minister of Chechnya, denying any role in the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote articles alleging that he perpetrated human-rights abuses

“Our presence exacerbates the security problems.”

RICHARD DANNATT, head of the British army, whose call for a pullout from Iraq “sometime soon” shocked his country’s government

“Interesting name, Kickbusch. Sounds like a political campaign.”

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, to Lieut. Colonel Consuelo Kickbusch, who won the 2006 Hispanic Heritage Award

“The elephant never made landfall into Mexico, but I tell you something: he could have made 15 laps back and forth, but no one showed up.”

RAJ PETER BHAKTA, former contestant on The Apprentice and Republican candidate for Congress from Pennsylvania, who paraded an elephant and a mariachi band through the Rio Grande along the Texas-Mexico frontier to make a statement about lax border control

“Veils suck.”

SALMAN RUSHDIE, author of The Satanic Verses and subject of fatwas, speaking in support of British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw, who recently asked Muslim women visiting his constituency office to remove their veils so they could communicate more easily

Sources: New York Times; BBC; Daily Mail; AP (3)

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