Democracy doesn't just consist of holding elections.

I think that America is a part of the world, that we want to cooperate with the world. We are not the dominant power in the world, that everyone falls in behind us. But we want to reach out and cooperate.

Many Sunnis, who are still stuck in the Saddam era mindset and believe Iraq belongs to them, are trying to prevent a new country from developing at all.

The UN could help the Iraqi government get on its feet and help the United States withdraw a bit more.

But figuring out Saddam Hussein was one our greatest mysteries. He marched to his own drummer and frequently as this unfolded he made decisions which were sometimes inexplicable to us and sometimes didn't look very smart.

The art of diplomacy is to take an opportunity and turn it into something.

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.