Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf.

It's likely that people will say we're all interested in destroying - ISIL is a threat to everybody. There isn't one country in the region that doesn't despise what ISIL stands for and is doing and that doesn't want to eliminate them.

I'm not going to put my energy into focusing on things that are hypothetical that we don't know.

I commanded a naval gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta. Then when I came home after two tours of duty, I decided that the same sense of service demanded something more of me.

And if [Vladimir Putin] does fight ISIL alone, how does it work out for Russia to have sided with Assad, sided with Iran, sided with Hizballah, when they're trying to reach out to the rest of the Sunni world in the region? That's not a good equation for Russia.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.

People talk about [Bashar] Assad running Syria. He doesn't control his own country. He's down to about 20, 25 percent of the country. What is this fiction that he is somehow the only person who can save Syria? There's - with Assad there, there is no Syria. So that's what the Iranians and the Russians need to really begin to focus in on.