From the time I was twelve years old until I retired last year at the age of fifty-seven, the Army was my life. I loved commanding soldiers and being around people who had made a serious commitment to serve their country.
An awful lot has been written about my temper.
What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That’s a huge question, to my mind.
I’d like to think I’m a caring human being.
First of all, Saddam did not win the war, even though he says he did, I mean, you know, that’s a joke and everybody in the world knows it.
Well, unfortunately, I have always regretted the fact that I have a temper, but I also have, you know, have great love and respect for all of the people that have worked for me. I think like everything else, this is one of those things that has been blown out of proportion.
But I would defy anyone to go back over the years and tell me anyone whose career I’ve ruined, anyone whom I’ve driven out of the service, anyone I’ve fired from a job.
If it had been our intention to take Iraq, if it had been our intention to destroy the country, if it had been our intention to overrun the country, we could have done it unopposed.
I prided myself on being unflappable even in the most chaotic of circumstances.
It is God’s job to forgive Osama Bin Laden. It is our job to arrange a face to face meeting.
I hate war. Absolutely, I hate war.
A very great man once said you should love your enemies and that’s not a bad piece of advice. We can love them but, by God, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to fight them.
I am living proof that if you catch prostate cancer early, it can be reduced to a temporary inconvenience, and you can go back to a normal life.
To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak – you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.
I don’t consider myself dovish and I certainly don’t consider myself hawkish. Maybe I would describe myself as owlishthat is wise enough to understand that you want to do everything possible to avoid war.
Judge your enemy based upon capabilities, not intent, you have to look at the enemy and really almost make a worst case call every time.
War is a profane thing.
I am quite confident that in the foreseeable future armed conflict will not take the form of huge land armies facing each other across extended battle lines, as they did in World War I and World War II or, for that matter, as they would have if NATO had faced the Warsaw Pact on the field of battle.
Success is sweet, but the secret is sweat.
It’s the sense of duty that keeps you going sometimes when things get very, very rough. Somebody’s got to do it. And if you don’t, who will?