View from the Late Night shows
"Laughter is an antidote to apprehension and panic." - Norman Cousins
  • Jay Leno: "The New York Times is reporting that President Bush now has a formal plan for attacking Iraq. They say the key to this plan is timing. As soon as Bush's popularity falls below 52 percent, then it goes into effect."
  • Jay Leno: "War continues in Iraq. They’re calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realised that spells ‘OIL’."
  • Craig Kilborn: "As fighting in Iraq intensifies, President Bush delivered his supplemental war budget to Congress. The money will cover 30 days of fighting, then we’ll be sent one war every other month until we cancel our subscription."
  • Jay Leno: "CNN said that after the war, there is a plan to divide Iraq into three parts... regular, premium and unleaded."
  • Jon Stewart: "Yesterday, the president met with a group he calls the coalition of the willing. Or, as the rest of the world calls them, Britain and Spain."
  • Jay Leno: "Iraq began destroying those missiles they don’t have over the weekend. See, President Bush may be the smartest military president in history. First, he gets Iraq to destroy their own weapons. Then he declares war."
  • Craig Kilborn: "President Bush spent last night calling world leaders to support the war with Iraq and it is sad when the most powerful man on earth is yelling, ‘I know you’re there! Pick up, pick up!’."
  • Conan O’Brien: "CBS news anchor Dan Rather has interviewed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. When asked what it was like to talk to a crazy man, Saddam said, ‘It’s not so bad’."
  • Craig Kilborn: "New rumours that Saddam Hussein is planning to flee to a castle in Libya with 10 billion dollars. Now President Bush doesn’t know whether to nuke him or give him a tax cut."
  • Stephen Colbert: " All Iraq has to do is get rid of its conventional weapons, disclose the location of its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and destroy them ... by Monday. If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction it would have to use weapons of mass destruction to destroy them... by Monday. But if it does that, it would be an admission that it has weapons of mass destruction, which would be grounds for war."
  • Jay Leno: "Experts say that if we go to war with Iraq, oil could reach as much as $ 80 a barrel. Of course, after the war it will be free."
  • Bill Maher: "Iraq now says that it will, after all, destroy its missiles. President Bush said, ‘Please, I used to pull the same trick. There’d be an intervention, I’d make a big show of pouring out the liquor and then there was a case under the floorboards’."
  • Jay Leno: "President Bush announced tonight that he believes in democracy and that democracy can exist in Iraq. They can have a strong economy, they can have a good health care plan, and they can have free and fair voting. Iraq? We can’t even get this in Florida."
  • David Letterman: "President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I’m thinking, well, hell, he didn’t need the approval of the American voters to become president either."
  • Bill Clinton: "Bush won the election fair and square — five to four in the Supreme Court."
  • Craig Kilborn: "Democrats were quick to point out that President Bush’s budget creates a one trillion dollar deficit. The White House quickly responded with, ‘Hey, look over there, it’s Saddam Hussein’."
  • Jon Stewart: "We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There’s just one problem — it’s in North Korea."
  • Jay Leno: "Well, it looks like we’ve moved a step closer to war. Not with Iraq. With France and Germany. How did we screw that one up?"
  • Jay Leno: "As we head to war with Iraq, President Bush wants to make one thing clear. This war is not about oil, it’s about gasoline."
  • Jay Leno: "In a speech earlier today, President Bush said if Iraq gets rid of Saddam Hussein, he will help the Iraqi people with food, medicine, supplies, housing, education — anything that’s needed. Isn’t that amazing? He finally comes up with a domestic agenda — and it’s for Iraq. Maybe we could bring that here if it works out."
  • Jay Leno: "In an interview with Dan Rather, Saddam has challenged President Bush to a live, televised debate. I think this would be fair, since English is a second language to both of them."
  • Jay Leno: "U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan says he can think of no reason to attack Iraq right now. I can think of five off the top of my head: Shell, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and BP."
  • Jay Leno: "In California, 50 women protested the impending war with Iraq by lying on the ground naked and spelling out the word peace. Right idea, wrong president."
  • Jon Stewart: "What was left unclear...is what will happen after Saddam is gone? Democracy seems unlikely, so the hope is that Saddam will be replaced by a more pliable leader, someone we can work with to keep the country under control, maintain regional balance of power. Someone sympathetic, secular, someone like, oh...1982 Saddam."
  • Jay Leno: "President Bush said it's now time for a change in Iraq and he wants them to have a Western-style democracy like ours. So right now in Iraq, the economy is collapsing, businessmen are corrupt, and Hussein wants his son to take over as president. Sounds like mission accomplished."
  • Conan O'Brien: "The Canadian government continues to say they will not help us if we go to war with Iraq. However, the prime minister of Canada said he'd like to help, but he's pretty sure that last time he checked, Canada had no army."
  • Conan O'Brien: "Yesterday American and British troops handed out food to hundreds of Iraqis. Not surprisingly, the Iraqis handed the British food back."