I have no doubt that as the Iraqi security forces get better, and they are getting better and they are holding territory and they are doing these things with minimal help, that we are going to be able to bring down the levels of our forces. And I have no doubt that that's going to happen in a reasonable time frame.

In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going.

I'm not personally fearful, but I look out, and there are a number of things that concern me, and I'm hopeful that we can overcome them.

I certainly have no regrets about overthrowing Saddam Hussein. I'd do it again. And, yes, there are a lot of things that I think we'd all do differently. Maybe we made some erroneous assumptions about the fabric of the society in Iraq and about the solidity of some of the institutions. And yes, there are a lot of things I would do differently. I'd probably work to rebuild Iraq from the outside in, rather than concentrating so much on Baghdad, for instance.

After all, when the world looks to America, they look to us because we are the most successful political and economic experiment in human history.

Does anybody think these people were just sitting around drinking tea?

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.