I speak Urdu quite a lot, too, and I read a lot of Persian.

I speak Urdu quite a lot, too, and I read a lot of Persian.

I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

My main expertise is in the past, but if I have to extrapolate into the future, I would say: no good news any time soon and an obvious exit strategy is not apparent to me.

I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.

Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.

Take the decision in early March to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr. It was made apparently without knowledge or understanding of the nature of his movement or how widespread it is.

I think that there's been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy studies and policy recommendations, which are nevertheless taken very seriously.

It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship.

But September 11 marked a big change in the sense that the public was suddenly interested, and as a professor at a public university I felt a responsibility to respond to all of the inquiries about the Islamic world.

Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.

An occupying power has no right to make significant alterations in the character of the occupied society, to change the laws all around, without a strong security reason and so forth.

Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.

For instance, I was a little surprised that the Shiites didn't rise up against Saddam and the Baath party across most of the country when the Americans moved in March and April of 2003.

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.

I think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates.

I believe that the American administration of Iraq has been arrogant, has pursued policies that are illegal in international law and has been ignorant and incompetent. I said this very forthrightly to the senators.

Did you know that they introduced the 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income in Iraq? Something that some politicians very much wanted to push in the United States without success but in Iraq they do it.

I don't accept the argument of people like David Horowitz that the government should impose some sort of predetermined political balance on academic research.

hitting rock bottom doesnt mean you have to stay there.

My favorite things often have a story behind them and are usually handmade or discovered at a flea market.

On the actual competition days, you get about three or four hours of physical exertion - between an hour-long warm-up, recovery in-between runs, the training runs, and then the runs themselves.

We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun, you don't have to do anything, it just works. It shows up every day.

There are quite a few actors in the business who are much more difficult than kids or monkeys.

All persons harboring or secreting the conspirators or aiding their concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President and shall be subject to trial before a military commission, and the punishment of death.

One of my favorite cartoon characters is Snoopy. I love the way he sits and lies on his kennel and contemplates the great things of life.

The only shame is to have none.

All activities and events that a body is to go through are determined at the time of conception.

I joined the anti-Fascist struggle with my best friend, who was a Jew.

Music is also a part of who I am so I'm thinking about recording an album.

I have a wonderful respect for old people.

I think the success of a talk show depends on how true it is to the personality of the person hosting it. The shows I really admire, like 'Oprah' and 'Ellen,' are distinctively like their hosts, so I think my show will be successful only if we try to stay consistent to my own sense of myself.

I'm an advocate for gay marriage. I have more gay friends than Carter has pills.

My husband says I look like a Q-tip.

I said to myself a long time ago that I didn't want to be that hanging-on-for-too-long, aging-rock-musician guy, and that's why I sort of got away from music.

I'm an artist, and I go in the studio and make my music. And then I'll give it to my dad and he does what he does. And he does, you know, the press, and figuring out shows and whatnot. When it comes to my artistic freedom, he doesn't, like, step on my toes or anything.

Many, many of my paintings have come from the first chapter of Moby Dick.

While it is often true that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, it seems like Yahoo's almost obsessive focus on Google is taking away from its other businesses.

We're on the verge of a financial collapse unless we balance the budget, and that means some really, really tough decisions.

So much in L.A. is waiting. It's so irritating. That's what's good about stand-up. You can go away, and you don't have to sit and wait by your phone. But it is very frustrating.

I felt like I was in the best photography school in the world - I had Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn teach me.

The right to vote is the right upon which all of our rights are leveraged - and without which none can be protected.

I like to make my fights exciting and different. Everybody in UFC can fight; we're capable of kickboxing, wrestling, but I like to stand out. That's what I really pride myself on. What can I do to stand out from the other people in my sport.