Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together.

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own lives in peace.

Our failure was that our intelligence community thought [Saddam Hussein ] had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. That was a mistake. There is fallibility in human intelligence and in human decisions.

The United States is looking at a way to launch peace with a disarmed Iraq. And so we are studying the declaration that Iraq submitted. Other members of the security council are studying the declaration, as is Unmovic and IAEA, and I would not make a judgment as to whether or not the declaration will be found deficient and whether or not that might lead to a material breach and whether or not, if it did, that would lead to action on the part of the United Nations.

It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty.

I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.

For all the hardship, I was still excited to be on the trail, testing my endurance, feeling especially alive as strength and fatigue flowed alternately through my limbs.