President Obama's record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.
There is a force more powerful than the fundamental forces of nature: time.
First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.
I grow up in the States, in Miami, but I was born in Guatemala, and my father's Cuban, and in 'Body of Lies,' I played an Iraqi.
Deep down, the Iraqi people want the United States out. And their self-determination should be respected.
It's harder and harder for journalists to get out in the field and interview Iraqis. The Web can get these voices out easily and cheaply.
Remember the valiant Iraqi peasant and how he shot down an American Apache with an old weapon.
In survey after survey, the Iraqi people say, 'We want to choose our leaders.'
There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.
Our own State Department polls say that 80 percent of Iraqis view the United States as an unpopular occupier.
The administration needs to speak honestly with the American people. Exaggerating our progress in defeating the insurgency or in creating an Iraqi army paints a dangerous picture.
On Jan. 30, millions of Iraqis will cast ballots in the country's first fair and free election in decades, marking continued progress in Iraq's transition toward a country built on the pillars of democracy and freedom for all.
The transfer is a monumental occasion as the Iraqi people take control of their government and their future and forge ahead with creating a society governed by the tenets of life, liberty and freedom.
While it may take generations of nurturing, nations founded on and grounded in freedom will eventually overcome and prosper. Once free, folks rarely accept anything less, and that includes Iraqis.
The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.
I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here.
This mass destructive weapons were sold to Iraqi government by the United States. And Mr. Rumsfeld has been one of the man responsible for this sale, for this bargain, for this market.
The links between the American government and the Iraqi government are so close that you cannot judge one without asking at least the other what he has done by this time.
As the Iraqi people better understand that Saddam Hussein and his regime are history, it is my hope that they will get behind the coalition effort to help them create a democratic government and rebuild their country.
I had a hope that the Iraqis would embrace a new government, would establish a new Iraq very quickly, and, but I never had that as an expectation.
I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.
