You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity.

We'll try to include Iraqi officers in our staffs. We will do everything we can to empower Iraqi security forces to stand up on their own and operate where they can alone.

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there'll be additional violence.

But clearly the fact that we've gone from zero Iraqi security forces on duty in May to up to 200,000 today is an enormous accomplishment, but it's not enough.

Morale is good; troops are confident; leaders are capable.

And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly.

You don't build a new power plant in the United States overnight. It takes years to build.

Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.

Undoubtedly, there are members of the former regime that are cooperating in some fashion and then there are extremists that are within Iraq that are cooperating with them.

The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth and it just can't walk away from the Middle East and central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

Everything that occurs to us in life is a resource, an experience that we can learn from and grow from.

My best friend is me, and I take good care of me.

Jesus: a wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist.

People love a good mystery; I understand that.

The most dangerous physicians are those born actors who imitate born physicians with a perfectly deceptive guile.

You have to have spent the night at sea, sitting in a life raft and looking at your watch, to know that the night is immeasurably longer than the day.

As the eldest in the family, I'm used to making unpopular decisions.

I really think [the Bush Administration]'s foreign policy agenda is to spread irony through the world.

The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around.

Trust grows when people see leaders translate their personal integrity into organizational fidelity. At the heart of fidelity lies truth-telling and promise-keeping.