He was not, however, going to talk about the three soldiers listed as missing in action on the Department of Defense website. He was referring to those who have been the victims of stop-loss, the device by which the president can, "in the event of war," choose to extend an enlistee's contract "until six months after the war ends." The "War on Terror" is this president's excuse for invoking that clause. Because that war will, by definition, continue as long as we insist that there is a difference between the terror inflicted on our innocents and the terror inflicted on theirs, American soldiers are effectively signing away their freedom indefinitely when they join the military. They are prisoners of an ill-defined and undeclared war on a tactic -- terrorism -- that dates back to Biblical times and will be with us indefinitely.

According to U.S. News and World Report, there are at least 60,000 of them.

• The man in the White House ... He's got a conscience as black as sin! There's just one thing I wanna know — How'd that asshole ever manage to get in?'
  
  
• We're involved in sort of a low key war against apathy. Most of what we do is designed to annoy people to the point where they might just for a second question enough of their environment to do something about it. As long as they don't feel their environment, they don't worry about it — they're not gonna do anything to change it. Something's gotta be done before America scarfs up the world and **** on it. (1968 - BBC television)
  
  
• Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.
  
  
• A lot of things wrong with society today are directly attributable to the fact that the people who make the laws are sexually maladjusted.
  
  
• It pays to make the U.S. school system a crock of **** because the dumber the people are that come out, the easier it is to draft them, make them into docile consumers, or, you know, mongo employees. There are plenty of yuppies out there with absolutely nothing upstairs. Graduate airheads with PhDs and everything but they don't know anything. And what do they listen to? Certainly not my records.
  
  
• The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre. (1977)
  
  
• If we can't be free, at least we can be cheap
  
  
• Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
  
  
• The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!'
  
  
• You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
  
  
• Go ahead Senator, I already hold you in contempt.
  To Sen. Slade Gorton R-WA during the "Tipper Gore Musical Obscenity" Hearings. Gorton had just warned Zappa he might be held in contempt of Congress for his expressions of attitude. Sen Gordon failed his next re-election attempt.
  
  
• ...if a million more agree, this ain't no great society, as it applies to you and me, our country isn't free, if all that you could ever be is just a lousy janitor, unless your uncle owns a store...