As the saying goes, I have big heels to fill.

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.

The big hang-up was George Bush wanted to get life lines, you know, so he could call somebody.

I mean, all of these things that [Bashar Assad] has done, there's no way even if President Obama wanted to just play along that you could actually achieve peace, because there are 65 million Sunni in between Baghdad and the border of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, who will never, ever again accept Assad as a member - as a legitimate leader.

Not to wax nostalgic about the 1970s, but back then people got upset when they saw injustice. They got tired of seeing our air, land and water polluted. They were shocked when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was polluted so badly it caught fire. And on one great day 20 million Americans marched all across this land. Politicians had no choice but to take notice.

Values spoken without actions taken are merely slogans.

There is a much cheaper way, less complicated way to bring Iraq and Saddam Hussein to its knees: it is simply to send the Bush economic team over there and let them run the country.