The Best of Notable Quotables; December 23, 1991

Vol. Four; No. 26

Gomer Pyle Award      


“Remember all the chatter about a short war? Well, forget it.”

Time Senior Writer George J. Church, March 4 issue.


Runners-up:


“Well, they [U.S. soldiers] really didn’t risk that much, number one. And second, to honor people who believe in violence is to honor the ethic of violence. And if you believe violence solves problems, you overlook quite a lot of morality. You overlook what Gandhi said: ‘An eye for an eye and we all go blind.’ So why celebrate that? Why honor these people?....Instead of celebrating, we ought to have a national month of mourning for what we did in that area of the world. We supplied them weapons endlessly and they used them. And then after we mourn, we ought to ask them to forgive us for what they did.”

Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy on CNN’s Crossfire, April 19.
                
War Highlights Shortcomings of U.S. Forces

Washington Post headline, February 10.

“Certainly a lot of Americans would die, an estimated 2,500 of them in just the first ten days of battle. American troops would do most of the fighting and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of them would be casualties along with countless thousands of Iraqis, soldiers and civilians.”

– CBS News reporter Richard Threlkeld on war prospects, January 4 Evening News.

“And why do they do these unnatural, unhuman things, these soldiers? Not for God or country or freedom or even because they’ve been ordered to. They do them, finally, as James Jones, the author put it, because they don’t want to appear unmanly in front of their friends.”

– CBS reporter Richard Threlkeld on U.S. soldiers, February 8 Evening News.