Oldest Line in the Book

History doesn’t repeat itself, but the rhetoric sure does.

Antigonus, when the Spartans were thus reduced, pitying the distress of so famous a city, prohibited his soldiers from plundering it, and granted pardon to all who survived, observing that “he had engaged in war, not with the Spartans, but with Cleomenes, with whose flight all his resentment was terminated; nor would it be less glory to him, if Sparta should be recorded to have been saved by him by whom alone it had been taken.   – Justin 28.4

 

Our only enemy is Saddam and his brutal regime — and that regime is your enemy as well.  – Bush on Iraq War

 

Our enemy is Saddam and his regime, not the Iraqi people. Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors.   – Blair on The Iraq War