- Chickie Donohue: Don't be dumb, Arthur. This ain't a war no more. It's mass murder.
- Coates: That's what war is, Chick. It's one giant crime scene.
- Chickie Donohue: But see, that's the stuff that the press can't get enough of. That's all you guys report. That's what pisses me off. It's not the whole story. I don't know. Maybe... maybe if some of you guys lost as many friends as I had, you'd feel a little differently.
- Coates: Those names behind the bar... That's the names of the journalists who've been killed so far. Friends of mine. Friends of everyone in this room.
- Chickie Donohue: But then why do you guys just report the bad stuff? That's what we hear back home. I mean, doesn't that hurt us? Like, as a country?
- Coates: The truth? The truth hurts us? No. The truth doesn't hurt us. It's the lies. The lies and the conspiracy to distort the truth, that's what hurts America. You've seen the soldiers we've got out here. They're just kids. Good kids being patriots. Doing what their country asks. And I want the truth told for them. The people running this war, they're not patriots. They're politicians. And they deal in the currency of lies. And if the lies continue, they're just gonna keep sending boys out here to be killed to justify the boys who already got killed.