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.

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.

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.

...would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio, gazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all!

There was one slight, desperate chance, and that I decided I must take--it was for Dejah Thoris, and no man has lived who would not risk a thousand deaths for such as she.

A story is never complete.

The lecturer who is full of his subject is usually very slow in emptying himself.

History doesn't proceed in incremental little notches.

If I walk in a home and a kid disrespects a woman, his mother or grandmother, then I am out... I wont recruit them

I'm someone who likes to keep busy, especially with projects that I find meaningful and fulfilling.

Never attempt to catch a whale with a minnow.