I can't spend a lot of time worrying about the numbers at home. I've got to focus on the mission.

You know, great powers don't get angry, great powers don't make decisions hastily in a crisis.

We need to understand what we're saying matters.

The Russians haven't helped us at all in the fight against ISIS. When you total up the numbers of sorties that have been going into Syria, aircraft attacks, if you will, going into Syria, when the Russians said they were going to assist, we got a very small number of Russian sorties.

We dont want the Taliban to put down roots, or the al Qaeda to put down roots in Afghanistan that can facilitate Afghanistan becoming - once again - a launching pad for international terrorism.

None of us wants any more war.

I seek as much as I can to mitigate risk.