The second touchstone for America I think unquestionably was pushing to conclusion the program we had with the Russians to control the Soviet nuclear arsenal. I tend to think that more than anything else, that will come back to haunt us.

No one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States. I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable.

I think clearly Europe has a lot to worry about. When I was working at the CIA - and I always worked with a lot of European services - they always were very condescending toward the United States, saying that we are so racist vis-à-vis blacks and other people.

It's very clear from what he [Osama ben Laden] said, what his lieutenants have said, that America is not even their main enemy. We're simply in the way of what they want to do in their own world, which is to destroy police states and Israel.

But the Iranians are surrounded by a sea of Sunnis who hate them. And if you look on the map, you can see that they're also surrounded by a bunch of American bases that certainly could hit them at any moment. The idea that the Iranians are a threat to the United States is absurd really. How are they going to hurt the United States of America? Unless we attack them first and then they use terrorism inside America.

What we face is a scared populace, and because it's scared, it's willing to put up with what I think are inevitably more moves toward the constriction of civil liberties, mobility within the country, the ability to travel overseas, all of those things we have long taken for granted.

I've said before: If Osama bin Laden was a Christian, Iraq was the Christmas present he always wanted but never expected his parents to give. It validated for the Muslim world virtually all of bin Laden's rhetoric. He had always said the Americans will destroy any strong Muslim regime, and we did.