You can't get it all done yourself. The best leaders are not afraid of picking people who are better than they are and who may one day replace them.

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

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'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.

I have never seen a good organization where the standards weren't high.

You have to create circumstances where your first-tier leader knows what you are trying to accomplish, because he is the one who's going to get it done.

We now believe it is appropriate for Saddam Hussein to be forced to change, either by the threat of war, and therefore that compels him to cooperate. If he cooperates, then the basis of changed regime policy has shifted because his regime has, in fact, changed its policy to one of cooperation. So if he cooperates, then that is different than if he does not cooperate.