It's important. One of the principles in the United States is civilian control of the military.

It 's really hard to impose democracy. It has to emerge naturally. You have to get out of the way and let it happen.

Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

I would have been a Republican, if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls.

One night I walked out of the church when the priest said that we should never have fought the Revolutionary war and every war was bad. It was 4th of July. It was an outrageously political statement. I just never felt right when people in the church would take these overtly political positions especially when I felt like I was a good Christian, I was serving my country, and I just didn't feel like I deserved to be lambasted by the priest on the 4th of July.

When you use force, people get hurt, and when you kill people, their relatives don't like it. And usually war has some unanticipated consequences so it's something you shouldn't launch into, on the expectation that this is going to rally the nation. This is not like 'Friday Night Lights'.

We've never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intel information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I've seen that for a long time.