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.

Just as that little opening in the Iron Curtain that Hungary created caused a flood of people out, and ultimately the beginning of the end of communism in Europe, if you could get refugee flows coming out of North Korea, while there'd be a very difficult humanitarian problem in the short run, both for China and South Korea, in the long run it would lead to reunification.

There is no patriotic obligation to help advance the career of a politician who is otherwise pursuing interests that are fundamentally antithetical to your values. That's not the call of patriotism.

Iran is barely over 50% Persian, and Arabs, Baluchis, Azeris, Kurds and many other groups feel left out of the society. That regime has a lot more weaknesses than people see.

It's not natural disasters that are to blame for the deprivation of the North Korean people, but the failed policies of Kim Jong Il.

I think the Russians basically don't think the North Koreans and the Iranians have the capabilities to get weapon systems that can threaten them, or that if they do the Russians know how to handle them and that that's the reason that it's all the more important that Russians be involved in the sale of high-end conventional weapons, the Bushehr nuclear reactor in the case of Russia and Iran, and similar kinds of relationships.