Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering. According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world.

When the President picks someone who is his ideological soul mate, that's his right, in my reading of "advise and consent." I do think, though, the more you get up the ladder, when someone is no longer accountable to the President, and more importantly, will stay in office after the President, the standard gets tougher and tougher.

There's a tendency on the part of Americans, all of us, to say, 'Hey, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone, we don't have to worry about these guys again.' We always have to be worried about them, we always have to be concerned about them, and we have to be well-informed.

I believe that the Israelis and the Palestinians, by and large, want peace, they each want their own country, and they want to get along, and they are going to get along. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I know enough about this, having been there, that these are sophisticated people. It's not like in Pakistan, where people have been told about Jews for a thousand years but don't know any. The Palestinians know the Jews.

It is crucial that civil liberties in this country be preserved, otherwise the terrorists will win the battle against American values without firing another shot.

I don't worry too much about what people think about my image, but I think I am pretty polite. My colleagues say I am a gentleman in my dealings with them, even when I disagree. I am difficult because I won't back off on things like the pay raise and the anti-terrorism bill. I'm not a go-along kind of guy. I do respect the institution. I do respect my colleagues. But I didn't go to Washington to make friends. That's not where my friends are.

It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government-sponsored execution.