A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.

You can't help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself.

In a recent interview, General Norman Schwartzkof was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness toward the people who have harboured and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on America. His answer..."I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting.

War is a profane thing.

Particularly when you're dealing with very high ranking people, you know, you have to get their attention, they are used to, by their rank, of having their own way and doing their own thing and when it's necessary to all work together on something, sometimes you have to hit the mule between the eyes of the two by four to get its attention.

What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That's a huge question, to my mind.

How do you fight someone who doesn't care if they get killed? You accommodate them.