I think there really is no shortcut to sovereignty.

There are 40,000 Iraqi police on duty around the country. If they detect an attack about to happen, the police are the ones who are supposed to stop it.

I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here.

I think there really is no shortcut to sovereignty.

I hope they're going to learn, and as a result of our response, that it isn't going to work. They're not going to change our life, they're not going to have us throw out our Constitution, and they're not going to chase us out of the Middle East.

While it's very hard to know exactly how to measure public opinion there, because there's no really good polling, the fact of the matter is, in all of the polls I've seen, the vast majority of the Iraqis prefer to be free and are pleased that the coalition freed them.

We're going to be on the ground in Iraq as soldiers and citizens for years. We're going to be running a colony almost.