Amplifying sound bites from the sermons

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, senior pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, at the National Press Club in Washington. (Associated Press (left, right); Getty Images)

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Barack Obama's former pastor, spoke yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington about remarks he has made in the past that have become repeated sound bites on cable television.

The sound bite: "God damn America."

The excerpt, from an April 13, 2003, sermon: "The government gives them [blacks] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no. God damn America. That's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

His explanation: "You know, that's biblical. God doesn't bless everything. God condemns something and d-e-m-n, demn, is where we get the word 'damn.' God damns some practices. And there is no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn't make me not like America or unpatriotic."

"I said to Barack Obama last year, 'If you get elected, November the 5th, I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.' All right? It's about policy, not the American people."

The sound bite: "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

The excerpt, from a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001, five days after terrorist attacks: "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. . . . We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

His explanation: "I was quoting the ambassador from Iraq." (Edward Peck, former US ambassador to Iraq, said on Fox News on Sept. 15, 2001, that terrorists attacked the United States because they believed the US government used violence against other countries. However, Peck did not suggest the United States brought the Sept. 11 attack on itself.) Wright went on to say yesterday: "Jesus said, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles."

The sound bite, also from the Sept. 16, 2001, sermon: "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

His explanation: Wright cited two books, Leonard G. Horowitz's "Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola" and Harriet A. Washington's "Medical Apartheid," and added: "As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't - based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything. In fact . . . one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a nonquestion, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people. So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable."