I prided myself on being unflappable even in the most chaotic of circumstances.

Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.

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.

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

I admire men of character and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates. And that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is.

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.

I like to say I'm not a hero. I was lucky enough to lead a very successful war.