“The Americans have always been better than the Iraqis at the leaflets. Early on in the first Gulf War, Iraqi PsyOps dropped a batch of their own leaflets on US troops, designed to be psychologically devastating. They read, 'Your wives are back at home having sex with Bart Simpson and Burt Reynolds.”

“Why is erasing desire seen as so important? If the subjugation of the self is the point of the self what's the point in having a self? It's like someone handing you a leaflet which says throw this leaflet away.”

“The deadline is at midnight in America; dawn, 5 A.M., in England, and 8:00 A.M., early morning, in Iraq. The Americans tie yellow ribbons around oak trees, hoping for their sons' safe return home. The Iraqis tie green ribbons around the Shrine of the Imam al-Hussain, praying for God's protection. In the coldest month, the coldest war of the modern age is declared.”

“Kafka would surely have been impressed by the twin ambitions of the modern empathetic state: the need to set up hyper-regulatory bodies preventing you from doing anything yourself, while simultaneously endowing lavish pseudo-agencies to hand out leaflets listing a 1-800 number you can dial to order more leaflets.”

“The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular. ”

“with few apparent connections to Afghanistan as such, but there were no calls to bomb Riyadh (imagine if the hijackers had been Iraqi). Rather, Saudi Arabia is a favoured ally in the 'war against terrorism'. It is obvious that at stake here are US geopolitical interests (discussed further below), more than concerns to prevent future terrorism.”