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

I'm living the dream.

I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.

There has, indeed, been very substantial progress in Iraq over the past year - violence is down by 80 percent, civilian deaths by about the same, and so on.

Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.

Political progress will only take place if sufficient security exists.

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