At 78 years old, I am not surprised at much anymore. Germany has taken divergent positions before, so has France, so has England, so has the US.

If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it.

Is it likely that an aircraft carrier or a cruise missile is going to find a person?

One of your tasks is to separate the 'personal' from the 'substantive.' The two can become confused, especially if someone rubs the President wrong.

We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.

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

Five days or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last longer.