Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad.

The American people can be - and deserve to be - assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws.

One cannot understate the importance of eliminating Bin Laden. He was a symbolic head of the organisation and, as we now know, an operational head of the organisation.

I'm not going to let people who work in the United States Department of Justice have their characters be assailed without any basis.

Good luck with your asparagus.

Let's deal with reality. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom.

It's a sad indication of where Washington has come, where policy differences almost necessarily become questions of integrity. I came to Washington in the late '70s, and people had the ability in the past to have intense policy differences but didn't feel the need to question the other person's character.