I think it's critical that we return national security issues to the center of the overall political debate in America.

A strong State Department to me means a corps of career officials who believe that their job is to advocate America's interests and who are trained in effective advocacy, not schooled in accommodation.

We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material - whether from a foreign source or by securing the materials to build an indigenous fissile material capability - it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year.

What we want for the Iranian people is control over their own government, which they don't have now. So you would do it through supplying resources and support from the outside to the indigenous people who are already quite unhappy. The mullahs have made hash of the economy since 1979, there's a huge amount of economic dissatisfaction. The young people, who are pretty well educated and sophisticated, know they could have a better life than this strict Islamic law.

I think it's critical that we return national security issues to the center of the overall political debate in America.

The real issue of dealing with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical or biological is: What is your tolerance for risk? And my tolerance for risk for WMD proliferation is pretty close to zero. Because otherwise, we and our allies are at the mercy of regimes like Ahmadinejad and the mullahs in Tehran, or Kim Jong Il and the Hitler-in-the-bunker mentality in Pyongyang, or others who don't share our calculus on the value of human life.

We need a strong and effective State Department. We can't conduct American affairs in the world without it.