But I want to just caution, it is not incumbent on the United States to prove that Saddam Hussein is trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He's already demonstrated that he's trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Your friends and your family, if you're close to them, they won't let you get too far from who you were or from who you are. And so I love staying close to people who've always known me. That's probably the best leavening that you could possibly have.

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.

NATO is built on security, but it's also built on values.

America's still a very, very powerful symbol and a very important place of leadership for the world.

I'm very glad my mother didn't let me quit piano lessons at age 10. She said I wasn't old enough or good enough to make that decision, and she was right. I remember at the time I was shocked. I did not like that my mother said those things to me. But when I got a chance to play with Yo-Yo Ma or more recently with Aretha Franklin, I thought, I'm really glad she said what she did.

It's important to Russia to be able to attract capital and to attract technology to develop their oil fields, their oil and gas fields, many of which suffer from lack of access to the very best technologies. And it's also important, and this has been the US government's view to have diversification of supply, diversification of supply roots and, of course, diversification in terms of alternative energy.