We have had some bad incidents and there continue to be allegations of others which will be investigated; but overwhelmingly American forces there, putting their lives on the line every day, protecting Iraqis, helping to liberate them, that is appreciated by the Iraqi people and by the Prime Minister.

I talked about the need for American leadership, I talked about the importance of the United States to a more peaceful world, a world that has been quite turbulent in recent years, and needs a strong American anchor.

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

Everywhere that I go in the world, people desperately look to American leadership in all of their world's most difficult problems. You can look at any region of the world and the United States is still the country to which those regions look for leadership.

Diplomacy, if properly practiced, is not just talking for the sake of talking.

Differences can be strength rather than a handicap.

Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It's not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.