“Night Draws Near” appropriately begins with the day of amnesty at the infamous Abu Ghreib prison when Saddam Hussein released all the prisoners. From this day on, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Anthony Shadid gets his first peek into deep-seated complaints and the long history of Iraqis, hardened by modern events but always proud of their identity."

"The cleanup and rebuilding will cost a hundred billion for New Orleans alone, but that represents about a year's take from the recently cut estate tax. End the criminal Iraq war fiasco, and we can easily redirect another hundred billion. But far more than money is at stake. We will ultimately have to confront a system which by its very nature exploits and oppresses many, in order to bring comfort and security to a few."

"The neoconservatives want to transform the region into territories controlled by Arab Shias, but segregated from Sunni dominated areas. In many ways this is an offshoot of the old American plan to divide Iraq into 3 segments and to gather the Arab Shia’s under America’s leadership."

"In order for this Neocon strategy--to turn Israel into a world power not dependent on the fickle U.S. for its survival--to work, it is obvious that Iran will have to be substantially weakened. Enter the latest Israeli noises that sound like an ultimatum to the U.S. and the world to de-nuclearize Iran or else."

"Sharon is now making both peace-loving and war-like declarations - depending on the audience he is addressing."

"After reading continued reports of Israel’s illegal assaults upon the Palestinians I thought about such an event and imagined such an opportunity. Since in reality I know that prayer is such an opportunity, I decided to write my complaint in the form of a prayer. I wrote it, hoping that perhaps it might drift within earshot of the noble angels who carry prayers to God, hoping they might be impressed by its desperation and deliver it right away."

"People are led to ignore their own peril. People are more interested in the features of their next cell phone than in the fact that cell phone towers kill hundreds of millions of birds annually. People are more concerned about the cost of gasoline to operate their SUV than the impact of their SUV on the global climate. People are more worried about the cost of protecting bio-diversity than on the cost of living on a planet with reduced bio-diversity."

"The U.S. Congress has yet to name an independent investigative commission similar to the one conducted by the Sept. 11 commission to examine how the Qur’an-abuse occurred in prisons across Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, and to develop policies to prevent such offensive incidences."