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" I had the privilege of serving in uniform with British forces in Cold War Europe, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the greater Middle East. "

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" Setting aside moral considerations, those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realize they are playing directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The terrorists' explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations - telling Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion. "

" We're all outriders out there, and what we have is all these large number of tasks - that's the herd; that's all the cattle - a whole bunch of individual, hundreds if not thousands of projects at any given time ongoing that we're trying to complete. So we're trying to keep the cattle herd, keep it all just going in the right direction. "

" There were very few people who were both intercollegiate athletes and Star Men. "

" If you don't want to have to kill or capture every bad guy in the country, you have to reintegrate those who are willing to be reconciled and become part of the solution instead of a continued part of the problem. And then, above all, the resources. "

" The truth is that a number of us have been saying for quite some time that it was only a matter of time until someone went to a gun show, bought a military-like semi-automatic assault weapon with a large capacity magazine, and did enormous damage. "

" I do talk to individuals still in the business of tracking individuals in the homeland and abroad. A lot of them have felt that they were hanging on by their fingernails a bit in terms of tracking all the potential threats out there. "

" Needless to say, innumerable challenges exist in all areas of governance, and much more needs to be done to help the Afghan government assume full responsibility for addressing the concerns of ordinary Afghan citizens. "

" The idea is to go to bed every night with fewer enemies than you had in the morning. "

" We're here so that Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for transnational extremists the way it was when al-Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks in the Kandahar area, conducted the initial training for the attackers in training camps in Afghanistan before they moved on to Germany and then to U.S. flight schools. "

" The bottom line is that Daesh's defeat requires not just hammering them on the battlefield but, simultaneously, revived political reconciliation with Sunnis. "

" Ungoverned spaces in the Islamic world will be exploited by people who wish us ill. They will not be contained. "

" The Germans have done wonderful work. Not long ago, a German battle group battalion conducted a very impressive counterinsurgency operation in a portion of Baghlan province. I think these are the first counterinsurgency operations conducted by any German element after World War II. And they did a very impressive job. "

" No greater privilege than I had as a soldier and then as a spymaster and to some degree now in the business world. "

" The art of coalition command - whether it is here in Afghanistan, whether it was in Iraq or in Bosnia or in Haiti - is to take the resources you are provided with, understand what the strengths and weaknesses are and to employ them to the best overall effect. "

" There is not a military commander alive today who is genetically predisposed to say that he has enough ISR and assets, and particularly not in the Central Command theater. "

" I think it's reality that Iran is going to have influence in Iraq. All elements of Iraq accepted that. "

" We periodically note that there are no silver bullets, there are no magic formulas, there's no single action or component of the overall... comprehensive civil-military approach. "

" During the surge in Iraq, we were able to roll back the tide of al-Qaeda and associated insurgents because we succeeded in mobilizing Iraqis - especially Sunni Arabs - to join us in fighting against the largely Sunni extremist networks in their midst. "

" During the surge and in the years after the surge, Iraqi forces fought and died for their country at vastly higher numbers than did U.S. and coalition forces. We know that they can fight. "

" I considered our British comrades to rank with the finest men and women of any armed service in the world. And I know that my fellow American soldiers - and those of the other coalition countries under my command - valued very highly the professional expertise, capability, courage, and determination of our British partners on the battlefield. "

" Iraq is a country I came to know well and the place where I spent some of the most consequential years of my life. "

" In many respects, Afghanistan represents a more difficult problem set. It does not have a number of the blessings that Iraq has in terms of the oil, gas, land of two rivers, the human capital that Iraq built up over the years, the muscle memory of a strong government - albeit one that was corrupted over time. "

" I don't vote. "

" Obviously, resilience matters. I was no stranger to adversity, but it's different when it's personal. Not something I would recommend. "

" Even before the missteps that I've had, I was never going to run for office. My family is adamantly opposed to it, and frankly, my politics don't necessarily work for the primaries of either of our parties. "

" I really started to get a sense of how, if you will, special Zarqawi was, I guess, sort of midway through 2004. "

" Well, the oil, the oil spot, if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you're trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out. "

" All Americans should take great pride in the men and women serving our nation in Iraq and in the courage, determination, resilience and initiative they demonstrate each and every day. It remains the greatest of honors to soldier with them. "

" As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan. "

" America is not in decline. "