“My economic plan is better than my bowling.”

– Barack Obama to fellow bowlers in Pennsylvania. Obama finished
with a score of 37, with a perfect game being 300. March 29, 2008

“Abraham Lincoln freed the black man. In many ways,
Dr. King freed the white man. How did he accomplish this
tremendous feat?  Where others - white and black - preached
hatred, he taught the principles of love and nonviolence.”

– Ronald Reagan in a speech on the birthday
of Martin Luther King, January 15, 1983

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.

Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles.

Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren – outcome.”

– George Bush, Sr., in Chapter 19 of his book A World Transformed in which he discusses the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War and possible outcomes of invading Iraq