I am not a politician, and I will never be, and I say that with absolute conviction.

I think Putin wants to recreate as much of the Soviet Union as he can through a variety of different means. He's invaded parts of Georgia, took Crimea, southeastern Ukraine, bases in other countries.

I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I am a realist, and the reality in Iraq is that it has been very hard and it continues to be hard.

I'm living the dream.

Pakistan are very keen to carry out the operations themselves. And there's significant effort on the part of the US and other countries to provide assistance that can enable Pakistan to do just that.

The Sunni Arabs began to realize that they had made a huge mistake by not voting in the election of 2005 and by not being part of the new Iraq. They had reasons for this: They were effected by the disestablishment of the military and by de-Baathification (the dismantling of Saddam Hussein's party) in winter 2007-2007. They increasingly recognized that their future lay in being part of the solution rather than a continuing part of the problem.

People often ask, why aren't you reading about what it is you're working on right now? And the truth is, you only get three pages a night before your eyelids close.