1991 Quotes & Sayings

I had been doing MP3 players and handheld computers since 1990-1991, and so they sought me out because of my experience. And about 18 generations of iPod and three generations of iPhone later, I decided to leave Apple. — Tony Fadell

Out of pure spite we pretty much always said the opposite of what the other said, no matter what they said, only to mark distance. That's how we ended up calling ourselves Satanists, despite the fact that we absolutely were not. There was not a single Satanist in the whole Black Metal scene in Norway in 1991-92. — Varg Vikernes

in a short essay I wrote in 1991, Gardening As Agriculture. In that essay I asserted that gardening should be recognized as a serious and important form of agriculture that functions as an incubator for new farmers and farming methods. — Peter Bane

All that was left to us was to wonder: who knows all that is innate to this world, or to any other? Why should there not be something buried deep within appearances, something that wears a mask to hide itself behind the visibility of nature? — Thomas Ligotti

In 1991, only two years into the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice suddenly left her powerful job as the top Russia expert on the National Security Council and went back to California - to get a life. — Elaine Sciolino

Several researchers demonstrate the ways people fail to label trauma as such or underreport traumatic experiences. In a sample of 1,526 university students, Rausch and Knutson (1991) found that although participants reported receiving punitive treatment similar to that of their siblings, they were more than twice as likely to identify their siblings' experiences as abusive as they were to label their own in this way. The authors reported that participants were likely to interpret parental treatment toward themselves but not parental treatment toward their siblings as deserved and therefore not abusive. Other studies similarly indicate that those reporting abuse experiences often do not demonstrate a metaconsciousness of having been abused (Goldsmith & Freyd, in press; Koss, 1998; Varia & Abidin, 1999; Weinbach & Curtiss, 1986).
KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING ABOUT TRAUMA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPY (2004) — Jennifer J. Freyd

Upon moving to Cornwall in 1991, I became bewitched by its enchanting timeless beauty, which captured my heart and holds me still. Brooding and mysterious, the south-eastern edge of Bodmin Moor provided the wild backdrop against which the introduction to my magical training and love of nature began. — Carole Carlton

I believe in myself as I look forward to graduating from Hamilton Heights High School in 1991. — Ryan White

Enclosed by a sand berm four miles around and 160 feet high, the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility entombs what remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. It has stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel. — Barton Gellman

Trapped inside a metaphor, I've often felt the need to re-describe it, to change the terms. This isn't so much a balloon, I've wanted to say, as a bubble within which I'm simultaneously exposed and sealed off ... depriving me of reality, reducing me to an abstraction ...
[NY, Dec. 1991; Columbia Graduate School Of Journalism Speech] — Salman Rushdie

We did 356 'Dallas' episodes between 1978 and 1991. The most memorable moment for me happened in 1980 when I got shot at the end of the third series. The rest is a blur. — Larry Hagman

One of the first significant, substantial purchases I made after starting testosterone, was a Compact Colt .45 1991 A1 automatic pistol. It's just about the best penis substitute I've ever waved at a sex partner. I love my gun. Can I get an a-a-ay-men? You better fucking believe I lo-o-ove my gun. I love to take it apart and put it back together and admire...oh,you sexy little death-machine...I suppose I oughta feel guilty or something, loving and fetishizing to the point of anthropomorphizing it it. But I don't. I won't either-don't matter to me whether or not I'm supposed to keep this a dirty little secret. I got a dick and I can kill you with it. Yeah, baby, trip my trigger, why dontcha. Heh. — Allen James

Few things build a person up like affirmation. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (Simon and Schuster, 1991),
the word affirm comes from ad firmare, which means "to make firm." So when you affirm people, you make firm within them the things you see about them. Do that often enough, and the belief that solidifies within them will become stronger than the doubts they have about themselves. — John C. Maxwell

If development proceeds at its present pace, there will come a day in the lifetime of my students when people will not understand why this ever was called the Pajaro Valley. May it go in the public record that some of the damage was done when the good liberals, Todd, Oscar, Parr, and Lowell, held majority control of the city council.
-Frank Bardacke (April, 1991).
Good Liberals and Great Blue Herons — Frank Bardacke

So it is that supernatural horror is the product of a profoundly divided species of being. It is not the pastime of even our closest relations in the wholly natural world: we gained it, as part of our gloomy inheritance, when we became what we are. Once awareness of the human predicament was achieved, we immediately took off in two directions, splitting ourselves down the middle. One half became dedicated to apologetics, even celebration, of our new toy of consciousness. The other half condemned and occasionally launched direct assaults on this gift. — Thomas Ligotti

OUTLANDER A Delta Book PUBLISHING HISTORY Delacorte Press hardcover edition published 1991 Delta trade paperback edition/July 2001 Published by Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc. — Diana Gabaldon

What formed me as a musician, a songwriter, the sound and personality of my band, a whole lot of that happened well before 1991. — Chris Cornell

Kuslich SD, Ulstrom CL, Michael CJ. The tissue origin of low back pain and sciatica: a report of pain response to tissue stimulation during operations on the lumbar spine using local anesthesia. Orthop Clin North Am. 1991;22(2):181 — Timothy R. Deer

My own awakening came in 1991 and my teacher then, in India, asked me to return to the West and to share this kind of inquiry. — Arjuna Ardagh

I feel I have to live a little longer before I write a sequel to my auto biography which covers my experiences up until October 1991. — Holly Johnson

I was a Ukrainian folk dancer in my teens, and I toured the country in 1991, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union. — Vera Farmiga

I spent seven years in France. Then, I went to Asia for five years. I came to London in 1984 and then America in 1985. In 1991, I opened my first restaurant in New York City. — Jean-Georges Vongerichten

....in 1991 we coauthored the Hannover Principles, design guidelines for the 2000 World's Fair that were issued at the World Urban Forum of the Earth Summit in 1992. Foremost among them was "Eliminate the concept of waste" - not reduce, minimize, or avoid waste, as environmentalists were then propounding, but eliminate the very concept, by design — Michael Braungart

The albino found himself brooding upon the nature of all unholy bargains, of his own dependency upon the hellsword Stormbringer, of his willingness to summon supernatural aid without thought of any spiritual consequences to himself and, perhaps most significant, of his unwillingness to find a way to cure himself of the occult's seductive attraction; for there was a part of his strange brain that was curious to follow its own fate; to learn whatever disastrous conclusion lay in store for it - it needed to know the end of the saga: the value, perhaps, of its torment. — Michael Moorcock

I first considered writing 'New York' in 1991. I'd been in the city for a decade, was married to an American wife, and sending my children to New York schools. I was even on the board of a coop building. But I wasn't sure how to organize such complex material, and for many years I put the project aside. — Edward Rutherfurd

For this was the other thing that Elric knew: that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance. — Michael Moorcock

At which Charion Pratt blushed girlishly, to her own furious embarrassment, yet the eye she cast upon the little coxcomb was not unlike that which a certain toad had once cast upon her: for there is never anything but apparent paradox in the choices made by lovers. — Michael Moorcock

When I was sworn in as Mayor of Nashville back in 1991, I have to admit to you that I felt for several weeks like a bit of an outsider who had somehow taken over but didnt really belong in this nice palace. I secretly wondered if the real mayor would come back from vacation one day and call the police. — Phil Bredesen

I'm thinking about recording everything to tape like it's 1991 and seeing how that sounds. — Chuck Inglish

From late 1988, when the Franklin case first broke into public view, until mid-1991, at least 15 people associated with the case as investigators, alleged perpetrators, or potential witnesses, died sudden deaths, many of them violent. — John W. DeCamp

We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict. — Harry Reid

I started traveling in the Arctic in 1991, so I experienced the ice in winter and spring. The seasonal sea ice, it has a long season. It starts in September and ends in June. — Gretel Ehrlich

I was haunted by a bear attack that happened in Algonquin Park in 1991. The problem was that I don't believe in ghosts, so that ruled out an exorcism. My other choice was to start writing. — Claire Cameron

would announce that NeXT was bringing the world a breakthrough. But the customers didn't follow and NeXT wasn't close to making a profit, which companies must do to thrive and grow. At a board meeting in spring 1991, company officials delivered more bad news about poor results. Investor Ross Perot interrupted the presentation with a blunt assessment: "So what you're telling me is the cockpit's on fire and the plane's in a tailspin. — Karen Blumenthal

I will not be defined by the marks left on me by the world, but by the mark I leave on the world (referring to the facial scars he still carries from his successful 1991 battle against cancer, which caused him to be turned down for a customer service job because he was "too ugly"). — James Houston Turner

Between 1991 and 1997 I had really serious asthma. — Cathy Freeman

I joined the Wildlife Conservation Society, working there, in 1995, but I started working with them as a student in 1991. I was appointed as a teaching assistant at my university because I accomplished with honor. — Corneille Ewango

Two subsequent incidents of import established CNN: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which CNN was the only network to cover as it happened, and the 1991 Gulf War, which CNN chronicled round the clock from a proximity as irresistible as it was alarming, bomb blasts and gunfire lighting up TV screens from coast to coast. — Steve Erickson

We promise that the events of 1991 will not happen again - we have pledged to remove Saddam and we will deliver — Tony Blair

While horror may make us squirm or quake, it will not make us cry at the pity of things. The vampire may symbolize our horror of both life and death, but none of us has ever been uprooted by a symbol. The zombie may conceptualize our sickness of the flesh and its appetites, but no one has ever been sickened to death by a concept. — Thomas Ligotti

I guess I'm the only guy old enough to figure him (Nolan Ryan, 1-Hitter Game in 1991) out. — Dave Winfield

In its report issued that year, 1991, Amnesty International recorded protests against human rights abuses in over fifty countries, the protest to thirteen countries making specific reference to torture. These are the kinds of thing many of us have a vague background awareness of, without there being much publicity unless the perpetrators are some currently loathed regime, or unless some highly visible Westerner is among the victims. — Jonathan Glover

Just ask the Iraqi Kurds and the Shia of the South. When the Kurds responded to US provocations, leaflet campaigns, and promises by rising up against Saddam in 1991, Bush Senior let them be slaughtered. I was in touch, occasionally, with someone in the DIA who'd taken part in getting the Kurds to rise up, and asked him how he could live with himself after that. He shrugged and said, "They're just animals." Which made me sick, actually. — Gary Brecher

For six years, from 1985 to 1991, I felt pretty weak and useless. — Ang Lee

The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge. — Jeffrey Sachs

Have you ever seen any member of radiohead aside from me in public? Do they interact or 'lift' objects? Holograms, all of them. I created them in 1991 using my massive brainpower. Even pitchforkmedia is a product of my brilliant imagination. — Thom Yorke

From the time that 'Nevermind' came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years. — Dave Grohl

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. — Christopher S. Hyatt

Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities — Tom Harkin

The political status legislation which emerged in Congress in 1990 and 1991 did not receive the support needed for enactment into law during my tenure as Attorney General. — Dick Thornburgh

Dreams from 1991 are becoming reality. We will build good relations between nations and people. We will strive towards mutual respect and equality of every individual, sex, race and national or any other minority. — Janez Drnovsek

The American public doesn't mourn contractor deaths the way we do the deaths of our soldiers. We rarely even hear about them. Private companies are under no obligation to report when their employees are killed while, say, providing armed security to tractor-trailer convoys running supplies into Iraq. In the 1991 Gulf War, the United States employed one private contract worker for every one hundred American soldiers on the ground; in the Clinton-era Balkans, it neared one to one - about 20,000 privateers tops. In early 2011, there were 45,000 US soldiers stationed inside Iraq, and 65,000 private contract workers there. — Rachel Maddow

In 1991, my father passed away and I went on a spiritual quest. It was a light one, not too terribly deep because I'm not terribly deep, and neither was my father. — Mike Myers

The inspections started in 1991, right after the Gulf War. One of the conditions for the ceasefire was that Iraq had to do away with all of its weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. — Hans Blix

When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no. I was a burnt-out litigation solicitor in my thirties, hating my life, and his cancer made me re-evaluate it all. — Michelle Paver

Former Senator Al D'Amato in 1991 offered an amendment to cap credit card interest rates at 14 percent. — Bernie Sanders

In the name of 'mutual assistance,' the Soviet Union would occupy Latvia until 1991, and it continues to occupy Latvia: in the obedient, epic lines at the post office, in the fug of coal smoke outside cities, in the notorious apartment buildings made of bricks of radioactive compressed ash. — Amity Gaige

Manchester United have, since 1991, conquered Europe about as successfully as Head and Shoulders has conquered dandruff — Martin Samuel

I think there are some people that are capable of making a sequel more special than the original. And we have seen that when the original Terminator came out, then Jim Cameron outdid himself with the sequel. Then it became the highest grossing movie of the year when it came out in 1991. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

The United States has weakened itself with Iraq; Iranians feel victorious - they feel capable of filling the void. I think from the very outset the nuclear issue has been secondary to the more strategic outlook, in which the United States has, since 1991, pursued a policy that it cannot permit any country in the region to become too powerful and challenge American hegemony. — Trita Parsi

When I joined Bill Clinton's start-up presidential campaign in 1991, I was confident that women would play an ever more important role, but I never gave a minute's thought to what would happen if we won. When we did - and I became the first woman to serve as White House press secretary - it changed my life. But it didn't change the world. — Dee Dee Myers

Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.75 — Michelle Alexander

July 15, 1991

Nita: My mother was a paragon of our neighborhood, People always come up to us with hugs, saying "You have the most wonderful mother." l'd think. "Don't you see what's going on in this house?" To this day, if somehow even in jest raises their hand to me, I will do this (raises hands to protect face and cowers) I cringe. Then they look at me like, what's your probem? You don't get that from a great childhood. — Sarah E. Olson

The last episode of Dallas was in '1991.' Unfortunately, it was a terrible episode to end the show on: it was a sort of 'It's a Wonderful Life' with Larry as the Jimmy Stewart character. In that episode, I was an ineffectual-schlep kind of brother, who got divorced three or four times and was a Las Vegas reject. — Patrick Duffy

I don't think we would have had to be an occupying power if we had done the right thing in 1991. — Jon Lee Anderson

I find it's more fun to write about something that you don't know completely and that you will discover on route. A dear friend of mine ... once said: 'The only time I know anything is when it comes to me at the point of my pen.' So I think that if you start to write about things that you know half well, that you're fascinated by, that you sense you have an appreciation of that others might not have, but you do have to acquire the knowledge as you go, you discover a great many things at the point of a pen. And it keeps the writing alive in itself in a way.
(in an interview with Martin Amis, 1991, see YouTube) — Norman Mailer

A City University of New York study done in 1991 revealed that nearly 90% of the American people identify themselves religiously as Christians or Jews, while only 7.5 percent claim no religion. — William Bennett

The most often cited cautionary example is Iraq. Under the heavy-handed rule of Saddam Hussein, Christians faced some forms of discrimination but they were basically secure. Once Hussein fell, Christians became primary victims of the chaos that ensued. From a peak of 1.5 million Christians at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, no more than 400,000 are left in the country, according to estimates, and the exodus shows no signs of abating. Many Christians in Egypt fear the same thing would happen if the Muslim Brotherhood ever returned to power, and Christians in Syria are convinced the same outcome would follow from a rebel victory. To return to Pope Francis, all this illustrates two points about his peace-making efforts going forward. — Anonymous

Have I mentioned the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, and the collapse of a section of the Bay Bridge, or the Oakland 'firestorm' of 1991? No need. There are already there, in my narratives that fail to mention them, in my dreams that fail to represent them. — Robert Appelbaum

The U.N. Security Council ordered Iraq in April 1991 to relinquish all capabilities to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as long-range missiles. — Barton Gellman

From 1945 to 1991, China was engaged in a series of wars that nearly broke them. This generation has been through hell: the Great Leap Forward, hunger, starvation, near collision with the Russians - the Cultural Revolution gone mad. I have no doubt that this generation wants a peaceful rise. — Lee Kuan Yew

I did my first series lead back in 1991 on a show called 'Reasonable Doubts' and have done many shows with other actors who are deaf. But 'Switched at Birth' is the first TV show where there is more than one actor who is deaf or hard of hearing and who are series regulars. — Marlee Matlin

My grandmother died in 1991 and I was born in '86. We only met once, but I didn't speak English and she didn't speak Spanish - so we had a communication problem. — Oona Chaplin

Anthropologist Mary Douglas (1991) examines the very thin line separating a joke from an insult: a joke expresses something a community is ready to hear; an insult expresses something it doesn't want to consider. — Henry Jenkins

Among the privileges of being a superpower, the right and the ability to make a local quarrel into a global one ranks very high. — Christopher Hitchens

Madonna has no equal at getting attention. She often seems to behave like someone who has been under severe restraint and can now say and do whatever she likes without fear of reprisal. She delights in being challenged, in telling more than she planned, in going further than she had intended. She will answer any question because she is genuinely interested in her own reply. A conversation or an interview then can become an opportunity for self-discovery, or just discovery. It's a hearty mix of self-consciousness and self-confidence. It's a type of courage, this free fall into the perplexing public now. — Carrie Fisher

In February 1991, I was rushed to the hospital in Los Angeles to have my feet amputated. Three years earlier, I had broken the national 100 meters hurdles record while a student at UCLA and was a favourite for the event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. — Gail Devers

I haven't had television since 1991, and it definitely influences me. As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case. — Chuck Palahniuk

I guess what led to me writing 'Holes' was having moved to Texas in 1991, and it was sort of my reaction to Texas. — Louis Sachar

The direct and indirect medical costs of low-back pain (LBP) are staggering. In 1991 it was reported that these costs equaled somewhere between $50 and $100 billion per year in the United States, with more recent studies showing these costs increasing. — Whitney W. Lowe

When Peru had a cholera outbreak in 1991, losses from tourism and agricultural revenue were three times greater than the total money spent on sanitation in the previous decade. — Rose George

Well, Japanese fans braced me since 1991 that was my first time I have been to Japan. So I know that Japanese fans has supported me over the years. So it just a lot of love and Wayne Wonder will release more music, more music and more music! — Wayne Wonder

And you, Prince Elric?" She attracted the albino's wandering attention. "Do you know his story?"
Elric shook his head.
"I only know," he said, "that he is a shape-changer and, that most cursed of souls, a person of rare goodness and sanity. Imagine such torment as is his! — Michael Moorcock

It is high time that the international community tell Saddam Hussein and his regime that this is not an issue of negotiation with the U.N. about obligations that they undertook in 1991. — Condoleezza Rice

In 1991, the average bra size in the U.S wad 34B. Today (2007) it's 36C. — Dan Taylor

Our best hits are real-estate stories, going back to our first, JoJo in 1991. — Jean-Georges Vongerichten

I went to University in 1991, and I remember, nobody thought of India. I remember conversations where people would laugh and say, "Do you have elephants on the road?" Nobody is saying that today. — Rahul Gandhi

I have a company called Earl Campbell Foods. I got into the meat business in 1991. — Earl Campbell

It was the case for a number of years that I was doing a book a year, but that was back when I was part-time teaching - and since 1991, I've been a parent, so that cuts into the time! — Chris Van Allsburg

Freelance investigative reporter Danny Casolaro was looking into the Cabazon/Wackenhut projects as part of a larger conspiracy investigation at the time he was found dead in a West Virginia motel room in 1991, allegedly a suicide victim. He had told friends he was convinced that "spies, arms merchants and others were using the reservation as a low-profile site on which to develop weapons for Third World armies, including the Nicaraguan Contras. — Gary Webb

In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Jack Palance gives Billy Crystal some profoundly simple advice. When Crystal asks him the secret of life, Palance holds up a forefinger, answers with a single word: "One."

Choose one thing. Do it to the best of your ability. Let it go. Pick something else. Repeat endlessly. — Lionel Fisher

I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book. — Donna Leon

[H]as it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?
[1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor' (Columbia University / The New York Times, December 12, 1991)] — Salman Rushdie

Americans are not intrinsically imperial, but we ended up dominant by default: Europe disappeared after the Second World War, the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so here we are. — Charles Krauthammer

LAURENE POWELL. Savvy and good-humored Penn graduate, went to Goldman Sachs and then Stanford Business School, married Steve Jobs in 1991. GEORGE RILEY. Jobs's Memphis-born friend and lawyer. ARTHUR ROCK. Legendary tech investor, early Apple board member, Jobs's father figure. JONATHAN "RUBY" RUBINSTEIN. Worked — Walter Isaacson

Most of America never noticed, but the 1990s were good times for trailer homes, a.k.a. manufactured housing. From 1991 to 1998, annual sales of manufactured homes more than doubled, to 374,000 from 174,000. — Alex Berenson

Is," "is," "is" - the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment. — Robert Anton Wilson

I have a bunch of calendars I used before I went digital. Every once in a while, I'll open up one from 1991 and look at all the names and appointments and things that, at the time, seemed so important. Meetings that I was really worried about, things that I was getting calls four times a day about, and I wonder, "Where did it all go? Where are they now?" It's so strange, everything has disappeared. The only thing that stays behind is the work. — Michael Bierut

The withdrawal of more than half a million Russian troops and dependents from Germany since 1991 is described by historians as 'the biggest pullout ever by an army not defeated in battle.' — Stephen Kinzer

So here's a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse, that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nassariyeh the latter a city which briefly rose in successful revolt against Saddam in 1991 why should Saddam's forces not keep fighting in Baghdad? — Robert Fisk