I consider myself a Republican.
One of the toughest battles in intelligence is combating conventional wisdom.
There will be boots on the ground if there’s to be any hope of success in the strategy.
No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he’s on.
Well, what I’ve said is that the war in Iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of nuclear – weapons of mass destruction.
Things have gotten so nasty in Washington.
Well, I’ve ruffled a few feathers at all the institutions I’ve led. But I think that’s part of leadership.
No policy has proved more successful in making friends for the United States, during the cold war and since, than educating students from abroad at our colleges and universities.
It has become clear that America ’s civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long – relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world.
When I was the director of Central Intelligence in the early ’90s, I tried to get the Air Force to partner with us in building drones. And they didn’t want to, because they had no pilots.
Some people have said, in so many words, that I’m kind of wooly-headed in believing that the Iranians would see not having nuclear weapons as more in their security interest than not.
I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. And it didn’t have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong.
The United States has been a global power since late in the 19th century.
What I know concerns me. What I don’t know concerns me even more. What people aren’t telling me worries me the most.
Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers.
Defense is not like other discretionary spending.
I don’t think any president that I worked with has ever said ’pretty please.
You know, if I were an – if I were a Taliban, I’d say, ‘What did al-Qaida ever do for me except get me kicked out of Afghanistan?’
If there’s ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.
We should never lose sight of the ethos that has made the Marine Corps – where ‘every Marine is a rifleman’ – one of America’s cherished institutions and one of the world’s most feared and respected fighting forces.