1992 was the worst year of my life, to watch my dad lose. It was a painful experience. Yet when I became president, it was so much easier to be president.

Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace.

We do not know how much our climate could or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur or even how some of our actions could impact it.

I talked about the human suffering in Iraq. And I also saw the need to advance a freedom agenda. Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens. I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived and the stir-up-the-hornet's- nest theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

There is some who say that perhaps freedom is not universal. Maybe it's only Western people that can self-govern. Maybe it's only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government. I reject that notion.

The advance of liberty is the path to both a safer and better world.

The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer - prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them.