I think leadership is both a trained thing and a natural gift.

It is the US government's desire for the Iraqi people to lead themselves, not for any outside power to be the leadership for Iraq in the future. There may be some transition period where the international community would have to help the Iraqi people put in place a representative government. But that is the goal, not for the United States, or any other nation, for that matter, who might be in such a coalition, if one is formed, to serve as the leader of the Iraqi nation.

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

The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.

Let it [racism] be a problem to someone else... Let it drag them down. Don't use it as an excuse for your own shortcomings.

90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.