Quotable & Notable

“But did they use dogs on you? Did they take photographs?”

-- A defense attorney for Saddam Hussein cross-examining a witness who testified that she was detained at Abu Ghraib prison on orders from the former Iraqi president. To the questions she answered, ‘No.’

“It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.”

-- Author James Bamford writing in Rolling Stone about the CIA’s hiring the Rendon Group to help ‘create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power’

“If we won’t withdraw our troops, can’t we at least withdraw our ham-handed propaganda efforts?”

-- Jonathan Alter writing in Newsweek

“I love my country but I think we should start seeing other people.”

-- Seen on a bumper sticker

“This is the American 1950s happening in India now.”

-- Padama Chandrasekaran of Madras, southern India. India recently launched a 15-year project to widen and pave some 40,000 miles of narrow, decrepit national highways.

“Pray for a mild winter.”

-- The last item on a list of recommendations for coping with high heating costs sent to Chicago parishes by archdiocesan finance director Tom Brennan

“A cult is a religion with no political power.”

-- Novelist Tom Wolfe

National Catholic Reporter, December 16, 2005