Let's not forget that Congress bears a lot of responsibility for many of the problems we have now

Everybody makes bad decisions. I am sure I have made my share of them over 40 years of service. Or I have made good decisions and have been overruled. The real challenge, when you are overruled, is to remember who the boss is and don't take it personally.

America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don't finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don't finish high school.

Great leaders are those who are able to look reality in the face, however painful it may be, and deal with it.

Terrorism threat is serious, and not just to American interests. The assaults in Russia against two airliners, bringing them out of the sky, and against a subway station, and then that horrible scene at the school in Beslan. This kind of terrorist activity no one is immune from it. And so it suggests that we have to do even more together to make sure the civilized worlds join together in the war against terrorism.

I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation.

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.