Quotes from Mark Bowden

visiting honcho making the rounds of the wounded at the compound, stopping to ask a grunt how many times he'd been hit. The man answered, "You mean today?

The perfect wound was one that was not mortal, debilitating, or disfiguring, but that was bad enough to get you out.

The upbeat DHS report was some kind of high-water mark for government gall—a tough record to beat. After sitting back and watching the Cabal do all the work, and nearly succeed, Uncle Sam finally found a role for himself: proclaim victory and then stick a flag in it!

If Bush's response on 9/11 was to start looking for somebody to bomb, Barack Obama sounded ready to launch some kind of global antipoverty campaign.

Local recruits made regular night trips past villages on the city's outskirts just to make guard dogs bark, which became such a nightly occurrence that few paid attention to it anymore—either that or the dogs would grow so accustomed they no longer stirred.

Many of the things overheard were redolent of deeper knowledge.

Beware of men with theories that explain everything.

La única forma de ganar es seguir jugando.

Steele gave the unapologetic impression that he could break you with his bare hands if it weren't for his strict devotion to Jesus and army discipline.

Never in America's history, though—however many sideburns Bowery barbers shaved or immigrants came ashore—had a losing presidential candidate argued that the whole nation had been swindled. When Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, his victory so outraged his opposition that an entire region of the country broke away. But in loss Stephen A. Douglas never claimed the election was "rigged.

So making him rattled and weary became a strategy.

His only cause, ultimately, was himself.

hot vit lon, a local favorite, a duck embryo boiled and served inside the shell—

Hanoi's leaders were virtuoso songbirds of propaganda. They lived in a bubble. There were no voices of dissent in their society to check or challenge wishful thinking.

the truth of Ho's teachings, that the party and the army were not enough. Real victory could come only from the people.

And Johnson was a convert. Body counts were the first thing he asked for in regular war briefings. He bragged that his general in Vietnam killed thousands of enemy personnel for every one man he lost:

Katie assured him that she was professionally nonjudgmental—which was not true; she was the opposite and was revolted by his crimes.

body counts. It was how their performance was assessed, and it became one of the greatest self-reporting scams in history. Everyone knew it was going on. Some of the more senior commanders discouraged the practice, but it was so widespread—and so hard to disprove—that few if any field officers were ever disciplined for it.

More bombs had been dropped in North and South Vietnam by the beginning of 1968 than had been dropped over Europe in all of World War II, three times more than were dropped in the Pacific theater, and twice as many as in Korea.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Vietnam became the case in point. In a letter to Diem in 1961, Kennedy wrote, "We are

The Battle of Hue would be the bloodiest of the Vietnam War, and a turning point not just in that conflict, but in American history. When it was over, debate concerning the war in the United States was never again about winning, only about how to leave. And never again would Americans fully trust their leaders.

Gunny, get down!" Ker told him. "You're going to get hit!" "By the time I get down, I'll already be hit," he said. "So I may as well stand up here and see what the hell is going on.

Instead of being assembled by genes, the worm was assembled by "memes," a word coined by British scientist and polemicist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Memes are original ideas. Dawkins argued that they play the same role in cultural evolution as genes play in biology, getting passed along from person to person, surviving and adapting as they move.

How could a nation built upon 'Give me liberty or give me death,' 'all men are created equal,' and 'of the people, by the people, for the people' have ended up waging a shameful, disgraceful war against a people who had done us no harm nor ever would or could?" he wrote.