“The State Department, along with the rest of the Administration, will be a strong voice for international legal norms, for living up to our treaty obligations, to recognizing that America’s moral authority in international politics also rests on our ability to defend international laws and international treaties.”
– Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State in the George W. Bush Administration

“The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogations using torture.”
– Condoleezza Rice

“The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees.”
– Condoleezza Rice

“I take my integrity very seriously, and I did not at any time make a statement that I knew to be false.”
– Condoleezza Rice

“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
– Condoleezza Rice, Sept. 8, 2002

“Condelleza Rice and Colin Powell are both dangerous people. What they did in Haiti is a good measure of it. They destroyed a democracy. They squelched loans that had been approved by the Inter-American Development Bank. They did everything behind the scenes, including arming the thugs that came to overrun the country. They’re frauds.”
– Randall Robinson

“Pathological lying and manipulation are not restricted to psychopaths. What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out. ”
– Robert D, Hare

” I think this a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”
– about US sanctions killing more than 500,000 Iraqi children

“I am very proud of what we are doing. We are the greatest nation in the world.”
– about sanctions on Iraq

“What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future.”

“We’re a peaceful nation… This is the calling of the United States of America, the most free nation in the world, a nation built on fundamental values, that rejects hate, rejects violence, rejects murderers, rejects evil. And we will not tire.”
– President George W Bush
[under the Bush Administration U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, bombed Somalia, used drones over Pakistan and Yemen, kidnapped Haitian President Aristide to Africa]

“God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq…’ And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.”
– President George W Bush

“Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that’s why we’ve got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.
We’re a freedom-loving nation. And if we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll view us that way, but if we’re a humble nation, they’ll respect us.
I think the United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.”
– George W. Bush, 2000
[under the Bush Administration U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, bombed Somalia, used drones over Pakistan and Yemen, kidnapped Haitian President Aristide to Africa]

“This is an impressive crowd. The “haves” and the “have-mores”. Some people call you the “elite”. I call you my base.”
– President George W Bush

“I glance at the newspaper headlines just to kind of get a flavor of what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, I get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves … people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”
– President George W Bush

“The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper.”
– President George W Bush

“Everybody’s got access to health care in America. You just go to an emergency room.”
– President George W Bush

“I don’t know where he [Osama bin Laden] is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him… I truly am not that concerned about him.”
– President George W Bush

“All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.”
– President George W Bush

“If there is somebody captured, I expect those people to be treated humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”
– President George W Bush

“We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq.”
– President George W Bush

“The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment.”
– President George W. Bush

“You need somebody in office who will tell the truth.”
– President George W Bush

“We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.”
– President Bill Clinton
[after the Columbine school shootings in Colorado, urging young people not to resort to violence, while he continued NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, bombed Sudan and Afghanistan]

“You know the one thing that is wrong in this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say.”
– President Bill Clinton

“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary citizens.”
– President Bill Clinton

“When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans… and so a lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it.”
– President Bill Clinton, 1994

“We’re not inflicting pain on these fuckers. When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers. I believe in killing people who try to hurt you. And I can’t believe we’re being pushed around by these two-bit pricks.”
– Bill Clinton in 1993, about Somalia – to George Stephanopoulos

“As the first president of the new global era, Bill Clinton visited more than 70 countries, set up the WTO, boosted the international budget, maintained high levels of Pentagon spending, militarized the drug wars in South America, continued the military and economic assault on Iraq, laid the groundwork for “humanitarian” interventions, bombed the Sudan and Afghanistan, and carried out protracted aerial raids on Serbia. Enthused by prospects for total surveillance of the world, Clinton raised intelligence spending levels to more than 30 billion dollars, with increasing emphasis on the supersecret National Security Agency. The planned, systematic, and brutal destruction of the Serb infrastructure must be considered one of the great war crimes of the postwar years.”
– Carl Boggs

“Bill Clinton, and most other contemporary Democrats, did not and will not do what is best for us or the world we live in. We don’t pay their bills – the top 10 percent do, and it is their will that will always be done. So is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? Sure. The Democrats say one thing and then do another-quietly holding hands behind the scenes with the bastards who make this world a meaner place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. That’s the difference.”
– Michael Moore

“The world once divided into two camps now recognizes one sole and preeminent power, the United States of America. And they regard this with no dread. For the world trusts us with power, and the world is right. They trust us to be fair, and restrained. They trust us to be on the side of decency. They trust us to do what’s right.”
– President George H W Bush, 1992

“What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea – a new world order…to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind…based on shared principles and the rule of law…The illumination of a thousand points of light…The winds of change are with us now.”
– President George H W Bush

“I will never apologize for the United States of America – I don’t care what the facts are.”
– President George H W Bush

“I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.”
– President George H W Bush [U.S. invaded Panama and Iraq during the Bush Administration]

“It is quite clear that one of the major challenges of the 1970s will be to curb the world’s fertility.”
– President George H W Bush

“You have a survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict on you.”
– Vice-President George H W Bush, on how to win a nuclear war, 1980

“We love your adherence to democratic principle.”
– Vice President George H W Bush to Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos

“If the American people knew the truth about what we Bushes have done to the nation, we would be chased down the street and lynched.”
– George H W Bush to reporter Sarah McClendon, Dec. 1992

“You can say anything you want in a debate, and 80 million people hear it. If reporters then document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2000 or 20,000.”
– George H W Bush’s press secretary to reporters following the 1980 vice-presidential debate

“Empathy is at the heart of my moral code and it is how I understand the Golden Rule — not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes.”
– Barack Obama in his book “The Audacity of Hope”

“Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.
We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.”
– Barack Obama in his Nobel speech, 2009

“I believe that all nations, strong and weak alike, must adhere to standards that govern the use of force… we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct… I believe that the United States must be a standard bearer in the conduct of war.”
– Barack Obama in his Nobel speech, 2009

“U.S. military commanders consistently fail to make the most fundamental distinction between combatants and civilians that is at the heart of the laws of war.
They issue a wide variety of illegal orders that include “weapons free” (formerly “free fire”) rules of engagement; orders to “kill all military age males”; air strikes on buildings where combatants have taken cover among large numbers of civilians; and brutal collective punishment of civilian populations.”
– Barack Obama in his Nobel speech, 2009
[Obama has rapidly accelerated the use of drones in which more than 70% of those killed are civiiians]

“What we need from the President of the United States is not another hypocritical speech… This means ending U.S. wars and occupations, radically reassessing the genuine defense needs of his country, bringing his government into compliance with its international treaty commitments and enforcing its own laws.”

Barack Obama in his Nobel speech, 2009

“The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.
– President Harry Truman, August 9, 1945
[HIroshima was a Japanese city with a population of 400,000. The atomic bomb killed more than 150,000 civilians.]

“Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
– U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey [1945] – which interviewed 700 Japanese officials after WWII

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
– Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, in his war memoirs

“It wasn’t necessary to hit them [Japanese] with that awful thing … To use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting negotiations, was a double crime.”
– General Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The truth is we are guilty. Our conscience as a nation must trouble us. We must confess our sin. We have used a horrible weapon to asphyxiate and cremate more than 100,000 men, women and children in a sort of super-lethal gas chamber – and all this in a war already won or which spokesman for our Air Forces tell us we could have readily won without the atomic bomb.”
– David Lawrence, founder and editor of U.S. News And World Report

“I want people around me who would kiss my ass on a hot summer’s day and say it smells like roses.”
– President Lyndon Johnson to Senator Hubert Humphrey

“Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament, and his Constitution may not last very long.”
– President Lyndon Johnson to the Greek Ambassador, 1970s

“The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance but agony. We have used our power not willingly and recklessly ever, but always reluctantly and with restraint.”
– President Lyndon Johnson

“Our one desire – our one determination – is that the people of Southeast Asia be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way.”
– President Lyndon Johnson

“Just get me elected, and then you can have your war [Vietnam].”
– President Lyndon Johnson to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, December 24, 1963

“I didn’t just screw Ho Chi Minh. I cut his pecker off.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson, commenting to reporters on the first American airstrikes against North Vietnam, August 5, 1964

“We own half the trucks in the world. We own almost half of the radios in the world. We own a third of all the electricity… Now I would like to see them [Vietnamese] enjoy the blessings that we enjoy. But don’t you help them exchange places with us, because I don’t want to be where they are.”
– President Lyndon Johnson before a junior Chamber of Commerce audience, 1966

“As a human being he [Lyndon Johnson] was a miserable person – a bully, sadist, lout, and egotist. He had no sense of loyalty, and he enjoyed tormenting those who had done the most for him. He seemed to take a special delight in humiliating those who had cast in their lot with him. It may well be that this was the result of a form of self-loathing in which he concluded that there had to be something wrong with anyone who would associate with him.”
– George Reedy, Lyndon Johnson’s former press secretary

“Lyndon Johnson was a monster… He was one of the few politicians with whom I found it uncomfortable to be in the same room. Johnson exuded a brutal lust for power which I found most disagreeable. When he said, “I never trust a man unless I have his pecker in my pocket”, he really meant it. He boasted about acting on the principle, “Give me a man’s balls, and his heart and mind will follow”.”
– Denis Healey, the Secretary of Defense in Britain in his memoirs

“Make the Chilean economy scream.”
– President Richard Nixon

“Those who vote for abortion will vote for it because they think that what’s gonna be aborted generally are the little black bastards.”
– President Richard Nixon

“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
– President Richard Nixon

“The press is the enemy.”
– President Richard Nixon

“People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.”
– President Richard Nixon

“I am not a crook.”
– President Richard Nixon

“We have never interfered in the internal government of a country and have no intention of doing so, never have had any thought of that kind.”
– President Ronald Reagan
[during the Reagan presidency the U.S. intervened in Nicaragua, Grenada, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Libya, Lebanon, Bolivia, Iran]

“President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment who wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans, and is getting a “bum rap” on human rights.”
– President Ronald Reagan – about Guatemalan dictator and mass-murderer Efrain Rios Montt

“As long as there is breath in my body, I will speak and work, strive and struggle, for the cause of the Nicaraguan freedom fighters [contras]…
[The contras are] the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.”
– President Ronald Reagan – about the U.S.-funded Contra mercenary army that terrorized Nicaraguans for more than a decade

“If it takes a bloodbath … let’s get it over with.”
– California Governor Ronald Reagan – about dealing with Vietnam war protesters

“From a pay phone at the Nutburger stand on Sunset Boulevard, Ronald Reagan places midnight calls to his brother Neil, an F.B.I. spy investigating the Hollywood Independent Citizen’s Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions for Communist leanings. As one of the Bureau’s confidential informants, code number T-10, Reagan delivers the names of suspicious colleagues and identifies cliques in the Screen Actors Guild loyal to the Communist Party line. At J.Edgar Hoover’s request, he reels off the names of disloyal actors and actresses at a secret session of the House Un-American Activities Committee.”
– Michael K. Smith

“Ronald Reagan was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy. He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government. He would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of that America, a U.S. military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire.”
– John Perkins