I've forgotten more about national security than George W. Bush will ever learn.

War creates its own intensity of hatred... You don't want to use force except as an absolute last resort.

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

One of the principles that we operate on in this country is that leaders are held accountable. The simple truth is that we went into Iraq on the basis of some intuition, some fear, and some exaggerated rhetoric and some very, very scanty evidence.

Let's not forget what the origin of the problem is. There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.

I don't think you can solve what's going on in Iraq unless you can deal effectively with the region and you can't deal effectively with the region if you start with the premise that you can't talk to people who disagree with you.

I tremendously admire, and I think we all should, the great work done by our commander in chief, our president George Bush...