President Obama has said that our aspirations should be realistic. We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to achieve is Afghanistan's capacity to secure and govern itself.

There [in Afghanistan] is also a growing insurgency threat from al-Qaida, the Taliban and other extremist elements, some of which comes from the tribal areas of Pakistan, as well as from the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan.

The Islamic State fighters in Mosul are dead men walking and I think they increasingly know it.

Iraq has gone from being on the brink to being on the mend, and it clearly has some big advantages.

This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight.

US forces have been increased [in Afghanistan ] from some 21,000 to about 31,000 over the past two years and a number of coalition countries have also increased their forces, there still are not sufficient troops.

There is no military solution to the challenges of Syria.