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.

Although we refer to the International Criminal Court, the real problem is the prosecutor, because it's the prosecutor who decides who to investigate and what cases to bring. This court fundamentally embodied a potential for abuse of governmental power that I felt was inconsistent with being a free person - and [it was] inconsistent for a free country like the United States to subscribe to it.

People say you favor assassination, what do you think war is? Except that it's assassination on a much larger scale, a much more horrific scale.

Texas is a big state. It's a major force in the Republican Party.

I'm obviously aware that people are quite focused on the economy rather than foreign policy issues, but that is something that should and can be altered as people see the nature of the threats around the world that we face.

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.

The way the Statute of Rome is written, responsibility for war crimes can be taken all the way up the chain of command. This is the sort of investigation that some people who live in Fairyland might like to undertake, but which bears no relationship at all to conditions in the real world.