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Was that a surprise for you — just being that you go to these places that are notorious media-wise as being 'Oh shit, don't go there.'

"Yeah."

You go there, and hang out and meet people and it hasn't been a problem. Knock on wood, nothing's happened.

"Well, I have found that usually the people of a country are one way and their governments are quite another. Like, if you look at the actions of the Bush administration — they throw their weight around on other countries pretty hard to where if you took all Americans and thought of them as you think of the actions of Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld, you might go, 'Americans, woah! I don't know, man. They come in and rearrange your living room and charge you double.' Then, if you see past that and see that Americans are perhaps quite different than this odd group of men and women, then you go, 'America's a really good place.' That's one of the reasons I travel is I like to tell that to people. Some people go, 'What's America like?' And I go, 'America is full of really good people and very generous.' I really think we are a very good country. They say things like, 'That's what I thought.' I was talking to one guy in Damascus where Nancy Pelosi did all the photos and I said, 'What do you think of America?' And he said, 'Besides Syria, it's my favorite country.' I went, 'Really?' and he said, 'Yeah!' And I said, 'Do you get many American tourists?' And he said, 'Not any more but we used to.' And I said, 'What do you think of American tourists?' He goes, 'You're all very friendly and you spend money which we like because we need you to buy stuff.' I go, 'What do you think is the problem with the two countries?' and he said, 'Bad politic.' I go 'Yeah, OK ...' I found that to be — and I've been fairly far and wide, parts of Africa and parts of the Middle East and Asia — and I've found people to fine and reminiscent of people I deal with here. They're parents. They drive cars. They have jobs. They worry about getting home on time. They have real normal concerns. They're not all living in caves going, 'Death to America!' (laughs) The American media has a way of taking the four nut jobs and ... What if the White Power was the only thing they talked about in America and it was seen as the dominant political party? What do you think the perception of America would be over a five-year period? That we're all drooling Neo-Nazis. When you assign radical Islam to Islam. I got into it with some Republican douchebag radio guy months ago, when in Denmark they ran the depictions of Mohammad. Some Muslims got very offended by that and took to the streets. And the guy said, 'Look at what mainstream Islam does about this.' I said, 'Sir, don't start. That's not mainstream Islam.' He said, 'That was 10,000 people.' I said, 'Yeah, you're talking about a religion with millions and millions of adherents, so 10,000 people is a proverbial drop in the bucket, and if you don't think that those kind of protests aren't something a little about Mohammed but a lot about get out of my country, stop blowing up my buildings and waving your dick around in my tea every morning. If you don't think it's also about that ... I know you know different, but you're trying to be Glenn Beck and stir things up.' It kind of tripped him out a little. 'Oh, so you sympathize with these extremists.' I go, 'No, but let's put it in its proper context because you're not doing that.' And so, I think a lot of things are taken out of context. It's very obvious the Bush administration wants a war with Iran and they're going to say and do a whole lotta stuff and eventually they will push Iran into a war. That's why Condoleeza Rice flew out with the Secretary of Defense to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and said, 'Look, for the first time in the history of America — Saudi Arabia, some of you who took our towers down — we're going to sell you joint direct attack munitions, JDAMs — the first time we've ever sold these. Then we'll do the same for Egypt.' What does this do? This makes Iran real nervous. So, what do they do, they'll go into the streets and buy some nuclear get-back. Then we'll say, 'Well, there they go. Gotta level it.' We'll do some kind of air attack, because we don't have the manpower. Hopefully, they miss all the people I met. I went all over Tehran and it's just a city. It looks like a bunch of people going to work on time. If you blow them up, I don't think you'll be able to call yourself the greatest country in the world. The American media has really let down America by not doing their job, by not bringing this stuff to light and being so complacent. It's corporate media — if you do something against the party line, Rupert Murdoch just says, 'Shh' and changes the edit. It's too bad that people with such intensely slanted opinions get to dominate what gets put out there for the good men and women to absorb. If you want the truth — well, versions of it — you've got to be pretty sleuthy on the Internet. I've given up on anything that's remotely like Paula Zahn because I know where that information comes from. It goes through the Palmolive filter before it gets to me. Of course, the president is going to say, 'It's going great in Iraq.' But the numbers don't bear that out. If it was, he wouldn't be asking for; how much more does he want moneywise? Where's this money gonna come from? Kinkos? I don't do finances, but how do we keep sourcing all these billions of dollars? We keep getting them from somewhere and if we had them all the time, why couldn't you have thrown a few billion at the American public education system and put a laptop on every desk, unless you don't want people learning history so they don't repeat, or unless you make more money off the problem than you would the solution."