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

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.

There's more than a few remnants left in German welfare policy today. Many Germans eagerly condemn Hitler's fascism but won't examine the other reasons why the Third Reich succeeded for a season.

From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can survive.

It was also during my tenure of office that the Japanese Government agreed to the conclusion of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and signed it, pursuing a policy in harmony with the avowed desire of the people.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

To me our bombing policy appears to be suicidal. Not because it does not do vast damage to our enemy, it does; but because, simultaneously, it does vast damage to our peace aim, unless that aim is mutual economic and social annihilation.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Handcuffing the ability of states and localities to develop clean fuels in the cheapest possible way, using local resources, is not sound or sensible policy.

I'd like to do policy and I'd like to do philosophy, I'd like to be able to get into the depth, into the meat of the argument - that's the kind of stuff I want to do.

While Kuwait is not a democracy, giving only half the population a voice in their government is not a policy this Congress should support and one that I am glad that Kuwait's leaders are changing.

I have a policy that I get to spend as much on myself as I give away.

We have the most flexible and adaptive economy. Making sure we sustain the ability of the American economy to perform well is really the priority of economic policy.

The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion.

From this experience we have learned that in a big party it is important to have the necessary and often controversial discussions on policy issues such as the health system while in opposition.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

During the past few years I have led a sometimes hard battle for German foreign policy.

Soon we saw that money going to women brought much more benefit to the family than money going to the men. So we changed our policy and gave a high priority to women. As a result, now 96% of our four million borrowers in Grameen Bank are women.

The people who make policy decisions should damned well know what they are talking about before they make the decisions. There is nobody who is an expert on cloning who would be afraid after seeing Attack of the Clones.

For the past several years, the Meth Caucus has worked to engage the Office of National Drug Control Policy on this issue. We have tried to get their attention that meth requires a strong, comprehensive Federal policy.

I think it's a lovely idea, but it will not pass the Congress. I live in a world of realities. The policy of our country is that we can drill our way to independence. I think that's a march to folly.

We have to define and put into practice a better, more coherent and effective policy on income security.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.

If there is to be any hope of prosperity for this country it is by reversing that policy which made us simply the kitchen garden for supplying the British with cheap food.

If we don't have accurate information, if we are not able to tell difficult truth one to another, we will never be able to effectively design a policy for Iraq.

Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.

Direct access to sea is an essential part of foreign policy.

If the British government is prepared to say that the Unionists will not have a veto over British government policy and that guns, vetoes and injustices will all be left outside the door, then there is no good reason why talks cannot take place in an appropriate atmosphere.

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.

Though every legal task demands this skill, it is especially important in the effort to frame public policy in a way that is properly responsive to human needs and predicaments. The question is always: How will the general rule work in practice?