Defense is not like other discretionary spending.

Congress is best viewed from a distance - the farther the better - because up close, it is truly ugly.

If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.

I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.

I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.

Soviet foreign ministers would come in to see the president all the time, routinely. Jimmy Carter stopped that after the invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan resumed it in 1984, I think. And so the fact of a meeting like that I think is not that big a deal.

I have always voted for who I believed was the best person.