it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.

I think my father thought I might be president of the United States. I think he would've been satisfied with secretary of state. I'm a foreign policy person and to have a chance to serve my country as the nation's chief diplomat at a time of peril and consequence, that was enough.

I'm very proud that we stood for the proposition that no man, woman or child should ever have to live in tyranny. We believed in democracy and promoted it.

As Americans we like to believe that we're loved in international politics or that people like what we're doing. But we also recognize that we have an extraordinary responsibility to do what we think is right, and that sometimes what we do is not very popular.

Sometimes people decide to write reports even though they haven't been to Guantanamo . And so I would just suggest that people look at some of the work that's been done by people who have been there. But that's not to say that we will not be very glad at the day that conditions permit the closure of Guantanamo and the trying of its inhabitants or for their release.

We're in a new world. We're in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn't act.

Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.