Egypt is the next domino to fall and, as they say, so goes Egypt so goes the Middle East.

The CIA is an incompetent bureaucracy, generally.

Did bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaida network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no.

If you want prisoners to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.

Destroying Iraq was the greatest strategic blunder this country has made in its history. Unless we change course, there's every reason to believe the Iraq War will end up changing the United States more than it will ever change Iraq.

The first suicide bombing that entered my consciousness was the Beirut embassy bombing. It was very personal. I'd been in the embassy and I knew most of the people in the station who were killed in the bombing. So you take the personal aspect of it and the mystery of who the bomber was and the fact that a small group of people could drive us out of a country that was absolutely key to the United States, and what was behind this... The fact that they've been able to hide the embassy bombers' identities for all these years tells me we're up against a very capable movement.

My take on the torture thing and even drones is: If we're going to get into assassination and torture, the second question is the morality, but the first is the effectiveness of it.