The whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe.

The whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe.

So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.

In reality, I don't think that many of the policies we've attempted to apply to deal with it are going to have any serious effect.

Second, recent polls over there show that the majority of Iraqis want us to leave precipitously.

Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. Acts of parliament have closed a few.

The presidents I served under don't have anything to do with my politics.