Dorothy meets ScarecrowIf this were a year ago, and someone told you that by May 2007, people would be making the following statements, would you have (1) believed it and (2) been able to predict who would say these things? But here we are, in 2007, the year all the wheels came off.

Think of this as a current events quiz — you know, just like you used to do after reading your Weekly Reader, if you’re as old as I. So without peeking at the answers before you take the quiz, and no fair using Teh Google, do you know who said each of the following:

1. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.

2. The American people deserve an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question. Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead.

3. I am glad [detainees] are at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.

4. I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation they should do everything they could think of. . . .
[snip]
I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time. . . . We are the last best hope of Western civilization. When we go under, Western civilization goes under.

5. I read just this week that a significant number of the Iraqi parliament want to vote to ask us to leave. I want to assure you, Wolf, if they vote to ask us to leave, we’ll be glad to comply with their request.

6. JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. . . .
[T]he administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department’s supervision. Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

7. If they f*** with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to f*** them too.

8. I don’t know. I think what happened is, again, as you’re taking a review, it became clear to us that this — as you develop — as you move into a new phase of the war — keep in mind, we are still in the process of deploying people in this new way forward, as the President called it, and therefore, it seems proper at a time like this also to task somebody with the job of keeping an eye on all the different players who are involved in it.


Quit peeking!

Answers: 1. Ron Paul, on Tuesday night’s Republican Presidential candidate’s debate, explaining why he’s not as crazy as the nine men standing next to him.
2. Chuck Hagel, commenting after James Comey’s explosive testimony yesterday.
3. Mitt Romney, on Tuesday night’s debate, explaining what he would do if he were the star of 24 Commander in Chief for torture.
4. Rudy Guiliani and Tom Tancredo, respectively, embracing torture, and making sure Romney doesn’t lock in the rightestwing Republicans the pro-torture vote.
5. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, explaining to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer how much Republicans enjoy being forced to vote to stay in Iraq.
6. Lead editorial, The Washington Post.
7. Paul Wolfowitz, man of honor, threatening what he might do to others at the World Bank if they forced him to resign, while he negotiated his “exit strategy.”
8. Tony Snow, trying not to answer the question, “why did it take so long to find a war czar?”

Photo credit: Scarecrow describes news to Dorothy, from MGM’s Wizard of Oz.

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