Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand.

I will look for a candidate, Republican or Democrat, who seems to be on the way or understands how to resolve the economic difficulties we're having, how to do something about unemployment, how to make sure that we free up our businesses and we don't over-regulate ourselves.

Terrorism really flourishes in areas of poverty, despair and hopelessness, where people see no future

Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.

One thing the military does far better than business is train its own leaders. I can't go to IBM and hire a battalion commander. They don't have any.

Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.

I'm going to be bringing people into the public diplomacy function of the department who are going to change from just selling us in the old USIA way to really branding foreign policy, branding the department, marketing the department, marketing American values to the world and not just putting out pamphlets.