If a cat sits on a hot stove once, it will never sit on a cold one either.

Putin is behaving in a very dangerous way. And Donald Trump sounds as though he would simply sit back and allow that to go on. I worry about where that would end up.

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

It's 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 secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

Iraq has no history of ethnic conflict.

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.

I certainly think it's important to speak up and say how unacceptable Donald Trump is. I'm always more than willing to do that.