Don't be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.

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

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

A few. . . critics are the only people I ever heard use the phrase 'imminent threat.' I didn't, the president didn't.

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

There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact.

When I served as US Ambassador to NATO in the 1970s, the center of gravity in Europe was France and Germany.