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

Make decisions about the President's personal security. He can overrule you, but don't ask him to be the one to counsel caution.

Preserve the President's options. He may need them.

No terror state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

We [the USA] do have a big nation's problem. We have the problem of a nation that's got two oceans, oceans on either side. People come from all across the globe and want to live here and they want to work here and they want to invest here. And that's a good thing. And they make up this country. But as a people, we [americans] are not highly skilled in languages. We're not highly skilled in knowledge of other cultures. And that's a problem.

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

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