The dead-enders are still with us, those remnants of the defeated regimes who'll go on fighting long after their cause is lost.

Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented.

Know that the immediate staff and others in the Administration will assume that your manner, tone and tempo reflect the President's.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.

The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light - through the prism of our experience on 9/11.

I cannot give any assurances. I'm not in that business. I haven't been, and I don't intend to get into it. People who try to make predictions about things or assurances often find they're wrong.

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.