The Secretary of Defense is not a super General or Admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the Department for the Commander-in-Chief and the country.
Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qaeda.
I am not going to give you a number for it because it’s not my business to do intelligent work.
Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.
When there happens to be a weapon of mass destruction suspect site in an area that we occupy and if people have time, they’ll look at it.
We never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Then there are three or four countries that have said they won’t do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won’t help in any respect.
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.
Leaders need to search for people who instinctively appreciate the wrongness of waste and misuse.
When surprise occurs, such as when the economy enters an unexpected recession or a conflict begins seemingly out the blue, the natural reaction is to immediately ask who made the “obvious” mistake. It is much easier to believe that our leaders are incompetent than to accept the less pleasant reality that ours is a world where uncertainty and surprise are the norm, not the exception.
The harder I work, the luckier I am. – Stephen Leacock.
The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships. – Abraham Lincoln.
If you order a bureaucracy to do something it doesn’t want to do, very often it will ensure that your attempt at change will fail and prove to all that it was right in the first place.
The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. – Margaret Thatcher T.
The absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence; nor is it evidence of presence.
There are only three responses to questions from the press: “I know and will tell you”; “I know and I can’t tell you”; and “I don’t know.” – Dan Rather.
Nothing big – certainly nothing big in historical terms – comes easy.
Whatever your position, reach out to those who know more than you do, and have been around longer than you have. Find those people. Listen carefully. And learn.
Agreement can always be reached by increasing the generality of the conclusion; when this is done, the form is generally preserved but only the illusion of policy is created.
People are policy! Without the best people in place, the best ideas don’t matter. – DR. ED FEULNER.
What you measure improves.” A corollary rule in the military is that “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.