It was right to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It was the regime itself that was a threat. I think in hindsight, what I would have done is turn authority back over to Iraqis much more quickly and say: "Your country, you figure out how to run it."

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

The only way to resolve the North Korean problem is to change the regime.

I haven't given up on the possibility that sweet reason will prevail.

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.

Swapping Bergdahl for illegal enemy combatants (terrorists, in common parlance) signaled unmistakably to Taliban and al Qaeda that Obama is determined to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter what the cost to the United States or those in Afghanistan fighting to remain free.