The question really is how do we get Embassy Officers into the minds of the American business community. That is a much more difficult task than understanding a statistical matrix.

If George Bush [Jr.] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this democracy.

Any Ambassador or Foreign Service Officer who has his or her head screwed on right knows that the U.S. position in the world is far more dependent on our ability to compete in world markets.

My own view of this, by the way, is, if the war on terrorism is successful over time, in its own way it's going to box Saddam in in a way that's going to make it much more difficult for him to maintain his power, and that he's going to become increasingly isolated. I think that's going to take time.

In the best of all worlds everyone in the Embassy is doing something to assist U.S. exports.

The consequence of a world full of nuclear powers to me is so incomprehensible in terms of the dangers that that implies.

There are a lot of other terrorist targets we ought to be focusing on. Well, there is Syria, for example, which is pumping through - because of Iran, is pumping weapons on into Hezbollah and so forth - which is then producing a lot of agony in Palestine and in Israel. We ought to be doing a bit to try to stop that.