There's a lot of money to pay for this ... the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years...We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.

Our security depends on having good relationships with our allies. Donald Trump mainly shows contempt for them.

Public action should seek to expand the set of opportunities of those who have the least voice and fewest resources and capabilities.

The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab world.

There has been a good deal of comment — some of it quite outlandish — about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post- Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army — hard to imagine.

One of the things that ultimately led me to leave mathematics and go into political science was thinking I could prevent nuclear war.

I'm constantly asking for alternative views on most things that come to me.