The radical elements in Islam are very dangerous. They want to achieve a return to the Islamic purity of the Middle Ages.

If Iraq were to descend into chaos, the Europeans would feel the effects just as much as we would.

For most of mankind, the average person knew what was happening in his own village and the next one, and nothing beyond that, and he didn't care, so that leaders were able to guide their countries almost irrespective of what people really thought because they weren't involved in it. Now, everybody knows what's happening instantaneously.

It's not for nothing that the Iranians are known as rug merchants. They are.

America wants to work with friends, with allies, with people of good will, to make this a better world.

Since the days of Peter the Great, Russians have been maybe Europeans who didn't share in the enlightenment and the reformation, or are they Mongol Asians with the European veneer. And they've gone back and forth.

To sum up, the position we took was that since we didn't know the internal situation in Iraq nor Saddam Hussein, that our best bet was to take counsel from the people who did know him and who did deal with him.