When you're in operations, the best thing you can do at the top level is get the strategy right. You have to get the big ideas right, you have to determine what is the policy, what is the level of effort you're willing to commit to it? And then you delegate to those who have to execute that strategy to the appropriate level. What's the appropriate level? It's the level where people are trained and equipped to take decisions so we move swiftly against the enemy.

I can't imagine that I would be asked that by the president-elect [Donald Trump], or then-president [Barack Obama]. But it's - I'm very clear. I voted for the change that put the Army Field Manual in place as a member of Congress. I understand that law very, very quickly and am also deeply aware that any changes to that will come through Congress and the president.

We do everything humanly possible, consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties, at all costs.

There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It's really great.

No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.

In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.

If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don't take the shot. Don't create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.