United States federal government officials

"We are at a juncture today that really is more of a threshold, even more of a watershed, than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was in 1941. We are currently in a war, but it is not a war on terrorism. In fact, that has been a great confusion, and the sooner we drop that term, the better. This would be like President Franklin Roosevelt saying in World War II, 'We are engaged in a war against kamikazes and blitzkrieg.' Like them, terrorism is a method, a tool, a weapon that has been used against us. And part of the reason we suffered such a horrific attack is that we were not prepared."

"We were not prepared intellectually. Those of us in the national security field still carried the baggage of the Cold War. We thought in concepts of coalition warfare and the Warsaw Pact. When we thought of terrorism, we thought only of state-sponsored terrorism, which is why the immediate reaction of many in our government agencies after 9/11 was: Which state did it? Saddam, it must have been Saddam. We had failed to grasp, for a variety of reasons, the new phenomenon that had emerged in the world. This was not state-sponsored terrorism. This was religious war. .... This was the emergence of a transnational enemy driven by religious fervor and fanaticism. Our enemy is not terrorism. Our enemy is violent, Islamic fundamentalism."

"I’d like to say we have fixed these problems, but we haven’t. We have very real vulnerabilities. We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy. .... Today, probably 50 or more states have schools that are teaching jihad, preaching, recruiting, and training. We have absolutely no successful programs even begun to remediate against those efforts. .... Nobody paid attention. Presidents in four administrations put their arms around Saudi ambassadors, ignored the Wahhabi jihadism, and said these are our eternal friends."

"Many will recall with pain what we went through in the Reagan administration in 1983, when the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut—241 Marines and Navy corpsmen were killed. We immediately got an intercept from NSA [National Security Agency], a total smoking gun from the foreign ministry of Iran, ordering the murder of our Marines. Nothing was done to retaliate. Instead, we did exactly what the terrorists wanted us to do, which was to withdraw. Osama bin Laden has cited this as one of his dawning moments."

"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."

"National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government."

""I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." (2003)"

"And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation."

"Sometimes the things we have to do are objectionable in the eyes of others."

"I’ve never thought much of Joe Nye’s writings on soft power."

"Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces."

"I really don't have a solution. Except to say that a precondition for any solution must be a recognition on the part of all parties on the legitimacy of all parties. That is you cannot build a political agreement on the premise that a Jewish state in Palestine is illegitimate."

"I think there is a potential civic culture in Arab countries that can lead to democratic institutions and I think Iraq is probably the best place to put that proposition to the test"

"Well, you’re going to find a disproportionate number of Jews in any sort of intellectual undertaking."

"The programme of the British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock is so wildly irresponsible, so separate and apart from the historic NATO strategy, that I think a Labour government that stood by its present policies—and I rather doubt that they would—would, if it didn't destroy the Alliance, at least diminish its effective ability to do the task for which it was created."

"About George W. Bush: "He came ill-equipped for the job and has failed to master it.""

"At the same time, Kissinger, Carter and détente were condemned as weakening the West by a group of conservative Democrats led by Henry (Scoop) Jackson, a critic of SALT, as well as by key Republicans who were influential in the Ford administration (1974–7), notably his Chief of Staff, Richard (Dick) Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. They drew on advice from commentators such as Richard Perle, Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz who warned about Soviet intentions. The continuity of this group, through 1990s’ opposition to Clintonian liberal internationalism, to the neo-conservative activism of the early 2000s, especially against Iraq, is notable."

"That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstitution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent – or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position – leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested."

"It quickly becomes apparent to any person who has considerable experience with classified material that there is massive overclassification and that the principal concern of the classifiers is not with national security, but rather with governmental embarrassment of one sort or another."

"While there are periodic calls from lifbertarians and others for the privatization or elimination of the program, given the first political opportunity to dramatically influence the Medicare program, a conservative White House and Congress sought to strengthen, not weaken, the program. To be sure, debates will linger about whether Medicare is too large or too small. Debates remain about the allocation of Medicare dollars. But December 8, 2003, demonstrated that there is no debate on this most fundamental fact: Medicare must survive."

"What, exactly, is the cost of this inaction? Estimates of the total national cost of medical malpractice range from $20 billion to $45 billion annually. But this number hardly tells the whole story. There also is the more hidden cost of defensive medicine, including unnecessary testing and second opinions that send patients scurrying through processes that would not otherwise be ordered and deepen the financial burden of America’s health care system by an estimated three percent of our country’s total health care expenditures. Who ultimately pays these costs? Reckless doctors? Faceless insurance companies? Seldom mentioned, the totality of these expenses ultimately falls exclusively on the consumer, since each malpractice award translates ultimately to increased malpractice insurance premiums, which, in turn, translates to either higher health care costs, fewer physicians (with less competitive pricing pressure), or both."

"The tragedy of Africa seemingly has no end. Viewing it from afar, the casual Western onlooker can be forgiven if the scenes begin to meld: Ethiopian famine in 1987, Somalian civil war and ensuing famine in 1992, and now Central Africa in 1997. The pictures and footage assume the role of media footnotes: snapshots of hopelessness, disaster, and death that seem as far away as the moon and as unrealistic as some science fiction film. Yet, like the African crises before it, the tragedy of Central Africa is very real and, in a global age, perhaps not as distant as some would like to think. With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy."

"Ultimately, in its collapse, Laos was important because it proved the validity of the so-called domino theory, which preached that communism--once victorious in South Vietnam--would metastasize throughout the region. Laos, like Cambodia, proved the domino theorists correct. On August 23, 1975, just four months after Saigon's fall, communist Pathet Lao (meaning "Land of Lao") guerrillas entered the Laotian capital of Vientiane and seized control of the nation. It was an event that, while clearly destructive to American interests in Asia, served as something of a wake-up call to those American isolationists who had downplayed the regional threat of communism. It also ushered in a horrid era for this nation's 4.8 million people."

"The breakup of the former Yugoslavia--like the breakup of the former Soviet Union--presents challenges, some of which (such as developing tranquil relations among peoples of varying and often hostile ethnic and religious orientations) may, indeed, earn the label 'complicated.' But with the Bosnian war now in its third year, it is worth asking whether Washington has for too long outthought itself on this issue. Does the Bosnian crisis not hold some fundamental truths? Most certainly, it does. And if these truths could be agreed upon in a bipartisan fashion, might they not lay the foundation for the development of a comprehensive American policy that could assist in the deterrence of aggression and ultimately an assurance of peace in the region? The answer again is yes."

"Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror."

"No chronology of Soviet atrocities can convey the crushing of the human spirit under Lenin and his successors. But the retelling of 70 years of grisly facts leaves little doubt that what we face today in Soviet communism is, indeed, an 'evil empire.'"

"Up against the ropes in the Iran-Contra affair, Ronald Reagan should have come out swinging, announcing clearly that this government carries itself in the tradition of the Marquis de Lafayette, that freedom fighters will no longer be left to die in the jungle, like Brigade 2506 at the Bay of Pigs."

"The time has come to stop talking about the lessons of Vietnam, and to start talking about the lessons of Afghanistan.""

"Obviously, crime pays, or there'd be no crime."

"Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots. ... Kill the sons of bitches."

"If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head."

"What I did was restate the law. I was talking about a situation in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes smashing into a house, doesn't say who they are, and their guns are out, they're shooting, and they're in the wrong place. This has happened time and time again. The ATF has gone in and gotten the wrong guy in the wrong place. The law is that if somebody is shooting at you, using deadly force, the mere fact that they are a law enforcement officer, if they are in the wrong, does not mean you are obliged to allow yourself to be killed so your kinfolk can have a wrongful death action. You are legally entitled to defend yourself and I was speaking of exactly those kind of situations. If you're going to do that, you should know that they're wearing body armor so you should use a head shot. Now all I'm doing is stating the law, but all the nuances in there got left out when the story got repeated."

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."

"Suffering. That was the key."

"He's basically a romantic comedian. …. He was a government agent entering our bedroom at midnight. We had every right to shoot him. But I've never owned a weapon in my life, and I have no intention of owning a weapon, although I was a master sharpshooter at West Point on both the Garand, the Springfield rifle and the machine-gun."

"Is it Liddy? Is that the fellow? He must be a little nuts. I mean he just isn’t well screwed on is he? Isn’t that the problem?"

"[George Washington] in uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life — one's own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough. Events enlarged his embrace to a wholly new idea of nation — the United States of America. But less than a century later his descendant by marriage could not slip the more parochial tether. In the halls of the family home standing on the hill above us, General Robert E. Lee paced back and forth as he weighed the offer of Abraham Lincoln to take command of the Union Army on the eve of the Civil War. Lee turned the offer down and that evening took the train to Richmond. His country was still Virginia. We struggle today with the imperative of a new patriotism and citizenship. The Peace Corps has been showing us the way, and the volunteers and staff whom we honor this morning are the vanguard of that journey."

"As every volunteer testifies, the Peace Corps is more than a program or mission. It is a way of being in the world. This is a conservative notion because it holds dear the ground of one's own being — the culture and customs that gave meaning to a particular life. But it is a liberal notion for respecting the ground revered by others. This double helix in America's DNA may yet be the source of a new political and patriotism that could save us from toxic self-absorption."

"Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition."

"Conservatives — or better, pro-corporate apologists — hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like "progress," "opportunity," and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right … This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove — the reputed brain of George W. Bush — as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today."

"The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won … Take the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero."

"No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them immunity from criticism."

"This "zeal for secrecy" I am talking about — and I have barely touched the surface — adds up to a victory for the terrorists. When they plunged those hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon three years ago this morning, they were out to hijack our Gross National Psychology. If they could fill our psyche with fear — as if the imagination of each one of us were Afghanistan and they were the Taliban — they could deprive us of the trust and confidence required for a free society to work. They could prevent us from ever again believing in a safe, decent or just world and from working to bring it about. By pillaging and plundering our peace of mind they could panic us into abandoning those unique freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of the press — that constitute the ability of democracy to self-correct and turn the ship of state before it hits the iceberg."

"On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths — half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion."

"Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country."

"A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence. One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats & Republicans, liberals & conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news."

"News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity."

"Bullies — political bullies, economic bullies, and religious bullies — cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with courage, clarity, and conviction. This is never easy. These Fanaticism|true believers don't fight fair. Robert's Rules of Order is not one of their holy texts."

"All my life I've prayed the Lord's Prayer, but I've never prayed, "Give me this day my daily bread." It is always, "Give us this day our daily bread." Bread and life are shared realities. They do not happen in isolation. Civilization is an unnatural act. We have to make it happen, you and I, together with all the other strangers."

"For the life of me I cannot fathom why we expect so much from teachers and provide them so little in return. In 1940, the average pay of a male teacher was actually 3.6 percent more than what other college-educated men earned. Today it is 60 percent lower. Women teachers now earn 16 percent less than other college-educated women. This bewilders me. … There was no Plato without Socrates, and no John Coltrane without Miles Davis."

"In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" — exactly what, pray tell, is that? — to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process."

"Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control — a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else."

"The most fundamental liberal failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility."

"Jesus would not be crucified today. The prophets would not be stoned. Socrates would not drink the hemlock. They would instead be banned from the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages by the sentries of establishment thinking who guard against dissent with the one weapon of mass destruction most cleverly designed to obliterate democracy: the rubber stamp."

"Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means — what it bestows on us — the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency."

"In those days [1955], affirmative action was for whites only. I might still be working for the grocery store in the small Texas town where I grew up were it not for affirmative action for Southern white boys."

"[Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience. He was killed for it."

"Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it."

"The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly "veneration of wealth" are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined."

"People who don't believe in government are likely to defile government."

"Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy. Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly "bang the drum on plutonomy." … over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists — choose your poison — have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. … This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. … Like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy. Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs. … Democracy only works when we claim it as our own."

"One of the great reporters of the 20th century, I.F. Stone, told journalism students never to forget that "All governments lie." He could speak with authority, having spent seven decades exposing deception and official lies by digging deep into government documents and transcripts. He gained his greatest fame and impact publishing the newsletter called "I.F. Stone's Weekly," taking on McCarthyism, racism in the military, and the Vietnam War. "In this age of corporation men," he wrote in 1963, "I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise." This critically acclaimed documentary, produced in 1973, offered an inside look at how Izzy Stone worked."

"Historian and activist Howard Zinn died in 2010, and the progressive world greatly misses his spirit and guidance. One wonders what he’d have to say about America today — one in which senators create legislation in secret and a president denigrates foes and allies alike via Twitter. What would he, a former Cub Scout, think about the president’s recent speech in which he exhorted Boy Scouts to boo a previous president? We can be pretty sure that he’d be dismayed and disgusted by an America where CEOs make 271 times the pay of an average worker... He’d certainly be no fan of a culture that made serious, though unsuccessful, attempts to ban his signature work, A People’s History of the United States."

"At 98, historian Bernard Weisberger has seen it all. Born in 1922, he grew up watching newsreels of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler as they rose to power in Europe. He vividly remembers Mussolini posturing to crowds from his balcony in Rome, chin outthrust, right arm extended. Nor has he forgotten Der Fuehrer’s raspy voice on radio, interrupted by cheers of "Heil Hitler," full of menace even without pictures. Fascist bullies and threats anger Bernie, and when America went to war to confront them, he interrupted his study of history to help make history by joining the army. He yearned to be an aviator but his eyesight was too poor. So he took a special course in Japanese at Columbia University and was sent as a translator to the China-Burma-India theater where Japanese warlords were out to conquer Asia. Bernie remembers them, too. In time, we became colleagues on a series of broadcasts about the 20th century. As we compared the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler in an episode titled The President and the Dictator, Bernie kept reminding the team that the most cunning demagogues "are never more than a few steps from becoming dictators.""

"Hitler was a master of manipulation, using propaganda, violence, intimidation, showmanship, and spectacle — and above all, fear. By demonizing "the other" – Jews, social democrats and communists – Hitler won the hearts and minds of the masses, consolidating his power, and turning Germany into a one-party Nazi state."

"I received a short email from Bernie, who had been watching on television the events following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. He wrote, "All this open talk by Trump of dominance is pretty undisguised fascism. He’s inciting chaos to set the stage for the strong man to 'rescue' the nation." There was no doubt who would be Superman riding to America’s rescue. When Trump promised to end what he called "American carnage" – a crisis of "poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, crime and gangs and drugs" — he did not ask for our help. He did not ask that we put our faith in each other or in our democratic values or even in God. Donald J. Trump would be our savior, the new Messiah — because "I alone can fix it.""

"This president is no friend of democracy. He has declared himself above the law, preached insurrection by encouraging armed supporters to "liberate" states from the governance of duly elected officials, told police not to be "too nice" while doing their job, and gloated over the ability of the Secret Service to turn "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons" loose on demonstrators — to "come down on them hard" if they get too "frisky". He has politicized the Department of Justice while remaking the judiciary in his image. He has stifled investigations into his administration's corruption, fired officials charged with holding federal agencies accountable to the public, and rewarded his donors and cronies with government contracts, subsidies, deregulations, and tax breaks. He has maligned and mocked the disadvantaged, the disabled, and people of color. He has sought to politicize the military, including in his entourage the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs (dressed in combat fatigues), as his orderlies unleashed chemical fumes on peaceful protesters — all so that the president could use them as stage props in a photo op, holding up a Bible in front of a historic church, just to make a dandy ad for his re-election campaign. He has purged his own party of independent thinkers and turned it into a spineless, mindless cult while demonizing the opposition. He has purloined religion for state and political ends. He has desecrated the most revered symbols of Christian faith by converting them to partisan brands. He has recruited religious zealots for jobs in his administration, rewarding with government favors the electoral loyalty of their followers. He has relentlessly attacked mainstream media as purveyors of "fake news" and "enemies of the people" while collaborating with a sycophantic right-wing media — including the Murdoch family's Fox News — to flood the country with lies and propaganda. He has maneuvered the morally hollow founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, into compromising the integrity of the most powerful media giant in the country by infusing it with partisan bias. And because truth is the foe he most fears, he has banned it from his administration and his lips. Yes, Bernie, you are right: the man in the White House has taken all the necessary steps toward achieving the despot's dream of dominance. Can it happen here? It is happening here. Democracy in America has been a series of narrow escapes. We may be running out of luck, and no one is coming to save us. For that, we have only ourselves."

"Journalist Bill Moyers...opened Saturday with a plenary address, saying: “Our dominant media are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards whose mission is not life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the whole body of our republic, but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders.”"

"I was also pleased to have been on the Bill Moyers program on PBS on several occasions."

"The President has kept all the promises he intended to keep."

"The country will not have to pay the piper. Through a combination of sound policy actions and a great deal of good luck we are well on our way to a soft landing and a period of growth and price stability."

"The things you hear now about European unemployment -- that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed to adjust, that there are inflationary fears -- are the same things that were said during the early 1930. It is well established that government spending began to pull Germany out of its slump in 1935. There is no known reason why spending for peace can't do as well at getting the economy going as spending for war."

"Takeovers wouldn't cause the stock market to rise unless there is an upward reassessment of earnings (potential). People are more optimistic and confident about the future."

"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. . . . I’ve always thought that countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles . . . Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the Least Developed Countries?"

"Things take longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you think they will."

"No free country will ever again have anything like the 90 percent tax rates that we had in this country. Past a certain point, high marginal tax rates are, indeed, terribly destructive."

"Where countries have been able to carry through on their reform commitments -- as in Korea, Thailand and the Philippines -- results are starting to come in the form of lower interest rates, new investment and increased growth."

"The situation in a number of countries reminds one that it's still a risky world out there in the emerging markets."

"We must recognise that in an integrated world, trade cannot be divorced from other concerns. We need to promote free trade and serious global efforts with respect to common problems even as we support every nation's right to chart its own course."

"I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologise for not having weighed them more carefully … I was wrong to have spoken in a way that has resulted in an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women."

"I know that there is one additional thing that I've learned and that is that what Harvard does and says has an enormous resonance that goes beyond Zip code 02138."

"With uncertainty in oil markets, a buildup of speculative pressures and the large U.S. current account deficit, there is a real possibility that Paulson's crisis-management skills will be tested."

"[I]t's important to remember how fortunate we are as a country to have a currency and a bond market that is seen in every way as a source of strength and it’s a huge responsibility for us to keep it that way."

"We know the first rule of holes is stop digging. We are in a hole that we have made. If we stop digging, the situation is less serious than if we continue to dig."

"Summers’s outlook on economic policy can be summarized by the remark that he gave me some years ago: "If I had your views on economics, I would find another profession." He meant that if free markets usually worked well and the government ought usually to stay out, then he would find economics to be an uninteresting occupation. Fortunately for Summers, he has always believed in the potential benefits from governmental activism, although the strength of this belief may have diminished over time."

"I vote to banish Larry Summers. Not from the planet. That wouldn't be nice. Just from public life. The criticisms of President Obama's chief economic adviser are well known. He's too close to Wall Street. And he's a frightful bully, of both people and countries. Still, we're told we shouldn't care about such minor infractions. Why? Because Summers is brilliant, and the world needs his big brain. And this brings us to a central and often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is the process wherein the intelligence of an inarguably intelligent person is inflated and valued beyond all reason, creating a dangerous accumulation of unhedged risk. Larry Summers is the biggest Brain Bubble we've got."

"Handguns are a public health issue."

"How do you get rid of the trash? It's out there in society, it's going on every day […] You can educate children an awful lot easier than you can get rid of the trash."

"We've tried ignorance for a thousand years. It's time we try education."

"As long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough to make sexual decisions for anybody else."

"If men went through menopause, we'd know everything about it, but we still don't even know if we should be taking hormones."

"We must stop this love affair with the fetus."

"I want every child that's born in the world to be planned and wanted."

"If you can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life."

"I'm against abstinence programs because I really consider "abstinence only" child abuse."

"Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms."

"They are boycotting common sense."

"We know that more than 70 to 80% of women masturbate, and 90% of men masturbate, and the rest lie."

"If you say children wouldn't know anything about masturbation on their own, you've never changed a little boy's diaper."

"Absolutely. You can do both. I feel that parents should educate their children about their sexuality and teach them the things they want them to know. But so often, what they're taught is what I was taught - to just say no. We have been taught abstinence only. We've been taught nothing about protection from diseases or anything. We've been taught nothing about contraception. And, you know, we say well, if we tell them about it, they'll do it. Well, if you've got the highest rates in the world, that says you're already doing it."

"I think that we need to look at health - sexual health - as a part of our overall health, and I don't feel that you can really be healthy unless you are sexually healthy. And I truly feel that we need to start educating our children about sex from kindergarten through 12th grade, so that they can respect their sexuality and protect their sexuality so that they can be - have sexual health throughout their lives. Other countries do it. Why do we have to have the highest teenage pregnancy, highest rates of STDs, the highest rates of HIV in our adolescents? It's because we feel that ignorance is bliss, and it's not bliss. We got to educate our young people."

""I grew up on a farm in a three-room shack. I was the oldest of eight children. We were very poor. We didn’t have running water. We didn’t have electricity, so we didn’t have TV or radio. No one had health care. There were no health facilities for miles and miles. The first time I saw a doctor was when I was a freshman in college. So I couldn’t grow up wanting to go into public health, or even wanting to be a doctor, because I’d never even heard of that. You can’t be what you can’t see"."

"I believe that the reason we do not see health care as a human right is that our country is run by a class of white men who don’t understand the problems of *needing* and *not having*. Perhaps they’ve never been there themselves. Nobody wants to be poor. We all want food, clothing, and shelter. And health care, too."

"""A core belief of mine is the importance of honesty. When we stop talking openly about sex, we stop communicating important information to our young people. Then you have worse reproductive health, more teenage pregnancy, higher rates of HIV/AID"."

""__ I think that we have made a lot of progress. But you know, it took thousands of years to get here. Can you imagine that in 1960 it was illegal for married people to use condoms"."

"I heard on the way over here, by the way, that they've come up with a new nominee for surgeon general: Pee-Wee Herman, is....You don't think that would have happened if it weren't for the fact that you were all elected do you? This is a sensitive subject and I am not gonna mention it because she got canned for it, but I'll tell ya, she said much worse than this. And she said far stupider things, like “The way to combat crime is with safer bullets, with safer guns.”"

"I certainly agree with the suggestion made by the former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders that a public dialogue on the decriminalization of drugs is absolutely necessary. As it stands today, people are punished because they have done harm to themselves. The "crime problem" can only be addressed ultimately by the eradication of poverty, by the eradication of the circumstances that lead people to commit the kinds of crimes for which most are sent to prison."

"The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized."

"I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

"Well, is he bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”"

"They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation."

"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

"George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God."

"Three days later we went after him again, and this time we got him. Not a mark on him. We got him. We brought him back into our base there and we had a Sea Land container set up to hold prisoners in, and I said put him in there. They put him in there, there was one guard with him. I said search him, they searched him, and then I walked in with no one in there but the guard, and I looked at him and said, "Are you Osman Atto?" And he said "Yes." And I said, "Mr. Atto, you underestimated our God.""

"Because some of you already know and are contacting me about it, let me make it official and let you all know that I have been terminated from teaching at Hampden-Sydney College after nine years there. [...] The bottom line is that I oppose these so called “‪#‎Bathroom‬” bills that let men go into women’s locker rooms, showers, and toilets and I have been very public about it."

"Terrorists strike like lightning- hard, fast, and without warning."

"The left can scream all it wants that the war on terror is about oil or American imperialism or George W. Bush's personal amusement. That if we weren't such big, bad bullies, the poor third world jihadists wouldn't have attacked us, and the French would like us better. But we are not the bad guys. Our motto is life and liberty. The jihadists' motto is convert or die. And no matter how much the PC crowd would like to deny it, the inalienable right to liberty that America is fighting for is part of the Judeo-Christian heritage that is the bedrock of our nation. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, the right to liberty comes from outside us, planted in our hearts by our Creator, making it not merely an American ideal, but a human ideal. America is a melting-pot society. We speak many languages, and respect many cultures and religions. But every man, woman and child deserves the freedom endowed by their creator. That's why America's cause is just. That's why we're the good guys. And that's why we will never surrender."

"I grew up under the leadership and tutelage of a real man who taught me about respect for the flag, pride in being an American, and expecting only opportunity from this great nation. He was so proud of my brother and me because we chose to serve in the U.S. Army. My sister was married to an Army officer as well, and my dad saw his dreams for his children fulfilled as we all served in some measure. It was important to him for us to carry on with the tradition of military service. I had no choice but to love America and to show that love by serving. If you were a male in the Boykin family and carried the family name, you were expected to serve. Two of my sons followed that tradition and joined the Army. I am so proud of them. The point here is that being a man is not about education level, physical strength, annual salary, or good looks. Rather, it is about character and demonstrated values. I was blessed to be raised by a real man who taught me a great deal about life. A man who set a great example who invested in me with his time and energy. This book is not about Cecil, but I would not be writing it if it weren't for him and the influence he had on my life."

"Cecil's habit of providing for others wasn't limited to his immediate family. One day he got word his best friend had lost his home in a fire. At that time Cecil was struggling to pay his own bills. But that didn't stop him: he cut corners and scraped together whatever he could. And he gave his friend all the cash he could find. I remember that day- as he handed the cash to his friend- because it looked like so much money to me at the time. I would guess it was no more than a hundred dollars in various denominations of bills, but to an eight-year-old it looked like a fortune. It left a powerful impression on me and just deepened my respect and admiration for him over the years. Throughout my life my father exhibited many examples for me to follow concerning the responsibility a man has to care for those he loves and for those who are in need. My father firmly believed it wasn't the U.S. government's responsibility to take care of his parents, his children, friends, or his neighbors. In fact, in his view, it was his role as an American who loved his country to provide for others as much as possible."

"A man provides leadership. A man provides direction, caution, and advice to others. A man provides emotional and spiritual support. A man provides stability and order. A man provides companionship and good company. A man provides identity. A man provides an example. All of these things require personal sacrifices of time, dedication, and effort. And from where does the strength and inspiration for that come? Or, in other words, what is worth living for, sacrificing for, and even dying for?"

"In 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia, I was the Delta Force commander during the events most commonly referred to as "Black Hawk Down." Two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in the city of five million people, where most of those people were starving refugees. Within thirty minutes of the first chopper being shot down, the second one was shot down. When the first chopper went down I sent every one of my soldiers who were already fighting in the city to go rescue the crew and passengers of the first crash. I was left with few options when the second helo went down over a mile away from the first crash. I had to pull together a second rescue effort using those soldiers, sailors, and airmen who were left in the base- many of whom were not combat arms specialties (they were clerks, mechanics, communicators, and supply people). To their credit, every man was eager to be part of the effort to rescue their brothers at the second crash site."

"Two of the Delta Force snipers, Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, watched the second Black Hawk go down from their position in another helo. The Black Hawk helicopter carrying Shughart and Gordon was being used as an airborne sniper platform. They radioed immediately to inform us the crew in the second crash was alive but injured and it appeared they could not get themselves out of their seats. They reported, "Their backs are probably broken. Put us in and we can get them out." The answer was immediate. "We can't send you in because we have nobody to support you with. You would be going into a hornet's nest since everybody's at the first crash site. Stay above them and keep shooting- take out as many Somalis as you can." They did. But they called back in less than thirty minutes and said, "There are too many Somalis coming in. You've got to put us on the ground!" The answer was "No" for the second time. The third time they called, they sounded both adamant and desperate. "We're the only hope; put us in." It was important to question their situational awareness regarding what was happening. Did they fully understand the risks? They reported that they were well aware of what they were going into since they were watching it unfold from their perch in the help. "Yes, put us in." They went in. And they fought valiantly, but both gave their lives to save one of their own. The lone survivor from the crash told us the incredible story of Randy and Gordy, which became the narrative for the recommendations of Medals of Honor for both men."

"I had the honor of standing in the West Wing of the White House as the U.S. president presented the medals to the widows and families of those two incredible warriors. There is no question those two men knew they were putting their lives on the line by going into that chaotic scene. Their request was denied twice. Yet they still asked to go in. Why? The answer is because they had a transcendent cause. And what was that transcendent cause? In their case, it was part of the fifth stanza of the Ranger Creed: "Never shall I leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy. Those two men lived and died by it. That promise to their fellow soldiers was their transcendent cause. Maybe we'd like to think it was the American flag or the U.S. Constitution or the oath they took to defend that Constitution. But, no, when you get to that level of combat, it's all about the guy on your right and the guy on your left. And your transcendent cause is the commitment you've made to each other. It's just part of who you are and what you do. You know he's not going to fail you and leave you. And he knows the same about you."

"We fought an eighteen-hour battle that day. Most people don't realize this, but we were fighting over two of our dead comrades- the pilot and co-pilot. And we took more casualties because we refused to leave them behind. We couldn't get those two bodies extracted from that helicopter, and we were not going to leave the remains of our two men behind. We were fighting over dead bodies. But, to us, it didn't matter. Alive or dead, they were our comrades and they were coming out with us. We knew they would have been there for us were the roles reversed. When Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon made that third request to go down into the street, they knew there wasn't much chance they would come out alive. That's a transcendent cause. And so was recovering the bodies of the others who died. The question for today is this- have we assessed our lives to determine who and what it is that's worth living and dying for? One can be part of today's "give me" generation or one can be part of "I'll give to you." Shughart and Gordon were givers- not takers. And they gave their lives. But they gave their lives because they had a transcendent cause. Their cause was- at the tactical level- the same for every warrior who's ever been on the battlefield: the guy behind you, in front of you, and on your right and left."

"Even in everyday life, something bigger, deeper, and more important than self-satisfaction needs to be inside us. Having a transcendent cause is not just some vague idea in the back of our minds, something we'll hang onto just in case of a crisis or a battle. No, it has to be there day in and day out. Our lives should reflect our commitment to that cause. One example of this may be as simple as your faithfulness to some uninteresting and seemingly unrewarding job- simply because you've got to bring home a check- and not giving up on it."

"A few Christian men I've met seem to think they are somehow robbed of their manhood if their wife has a job, and it's even worse if she has a serious career of her own. That's a foolish attitude. At the same time, what is even worse is a man whose wife is compelled to work because her husband refused to get a job."

"In every case, here's the challenging bottom line: practicing tough love is- without question- toughest on the man who loves the most."

"Talk through options and offer suggestions. Don't ignore an obvious problem in your family life and in your marriage."

"Big talkers have a greater tendency to compromise you than the strong, silent types who aren't so eager to transmit the latest insider gossip. You have to think about those characteristics."

"Most of us have managed to hang on to a few good friends. They may not be battle buddies, but they've found a way to stay in our lives, and we're in theirs for the long haul. When that's the case, we have certain responsibilities to them. Sometimes we have the pleasure of applauding their accomplishments or sharing happy occasions with them. But, when necessary, we also owe it to them to be truth-tellers. And we have to hope they'll be equally straightforward with us."

"Some men can become increasingly self-indulgent and you notice over time they're spending more and more money on personal pastimes. They always want the very best gear available to enhance their hobby. Fishing. Golf. Hunting. Photography. Collecting fossils. Whatever it is, once they've bought every gadget or artifact they can possibly find, they move on to the next diversion, and on it goes. Before long, your friend- or your friend's wife- is trying to figure out how to pay the bills by month's end. Of course, you can't always stop somebody from making foolish mistakes and choices, but as a friend, you really do have a responsibility to try. You may be able to protect a very good friend from making a very bad life decision, and you've got to hope someday he'll find the courage to do the same for you."

"We also need to be encouragers to our friends. Some of them have hopes and dreams, yet although they've prayed and watched and waited, there's been no answer from above. I think most of us want instant gratification. We even want it in our walk with Christ. Sometimes we get quick and miraculous answers to our prayers. The more typical story is one of persistence and steadfastness; pray, watch, and wait. Do you remember the story of Elijah? He was up on Mount Carmel waiting for God to send the rain He'd promised. Elijah told his servant, "Go look. Do you see any rain clouds?" His servant came back to him six times and said, "Nope." Elijah sent him out yet again. That time the servant came back and said, "Well, yeah. I did see a cloud the size of a man's fist..." After seven tries, the rain was finally on its way."

"Hampden-Sydney College does not typically comment on personnel matters involving individual employees, but so much misinformation is circulating regarding General William “Jerry” Boykin and his relationship with the College that we offer the following statement of clarification: General Boykin was a part-time adjunct faculty member serving as the Wheat Professor, employed on a year-to-year basis. The Wheat Professorship was created to be a rotating position, allowing Hampden-Sydney to bring distinguished individuals from a wide variety of professional backgrounds to the campus. Given the rotating nature of the Wheat Professorship, it is inaccurate to suggest that General Boykin was fired. It is also an injustice to General Boykin’s service to Hampden-Sydney and its students. We are grateful for the contributions General Boykin made to our educational mission and the impact he had on our students. We look forward to the exciting contributions to be made by future Wheat Professors who will follow General Boykin in this distinguished role."

"General Boykin spent over thirty-six years in the United States Army. He is a man's man. His last duty was at the Pentagon as the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. He has played a role in almost every major American military operation over the last four decades, serving in Grenada, Somalia, and Iraq. From 1978-1993 he was assigned in various capacities to Delta Force. Not only was he a founding member of the Delta Force, he has also led Green Berets and other special operations units many times. Among his many successful operations was one in October of 1983- the beginning of the end of the Soviet Communist regime. A major at the time, General Boykin worked as an operations officer during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. During a dawn assault to free government officials, held by the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army, he was shot in the arm with a fifty-caliber round, splitting his bone completely in two. He was told he would never use his arm again, but God had the final say and today you would never even know he was injured. His citations for valor are too numerous to list."

"God has had His hand on this man from start to finish and He is not finished with him yet. General Boykin is an author, an ordained minister, a professor, a decorated war hero for which he has my most profound respect and admiration. His courage and commitment to the truth extend beyond the physical field of battle. He not only has been willing to lay down his life for his country, he has been willing to lay down his life for his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and his reputation to serve Him. General Boykin will not shut up; he will not back up; he will not give up. He is a hero among heroes. He is the kind of man I want by my side in the spiritual war that is raging in America today."

"A prayer breakfast at Fort Riley set for Monday as part of 1st Infantry Division's "Victory Week" celebration has been rescheduled, and the retired three-star general who'd been invited to speak — and whose invitation to a similar event at West Point in 2012 met with fierce opposition — won't be asked back. Retired Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, a 36-year Army veteran and longtime member of the special operations community, was to address the morning gathering at the Kansas base, but "due to a number of scheduling conflicts ... the breakfast will be rescheduled for a later date," 1st ID spokesman Master Sgt. Mike Lavigne said in a Wednesday email.The day before, Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder Mikey Weinstein sent multiple emails to 1st ID commander Maj. Gen. Wayne Grigsby on behalf of his advocacy group, demanding the leader "immediately withdraw" Boykin's invitation. Weinstein's email included a report from another MRFF staffer on Boykin that brought up, among other issues: *The general's statements while in uniform comparing the global war on terrorism to a holy war against Satan. *Widely reported remarks, also during his time in service, that he had confidence in an engagement with enemy forces led by a Somali warlord because "I knew my God was bigger than his." *Statements made after his retirement claiming Islam is "not just a religion, it's a totalitarian way of life" and should not receive protection under the First Amendment. Boykin, now an executive vice president with the conservative Family Research Council, could not immediately be reached for comment."

"All of the above issues were [known] before Boykin was invited to speak at a prayer breakfast at the U.S. Military Academy in 2012, an invitation that earned scorn from the MRFF, veterans groups such as VoteVets.org, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. While the academy never rescinded the invite, Boykin pulled out of the event about a week before it took place. Since then, Boykin has remained active as a speaker, was part of Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz's national security advisory team, and was reprimanded in 2013 for disclosing classified information in his 2008 memoir, despite reportedly being cleared of wrongdoing by a similar Defense Department in 2010. Lavigne, with 1st ID, could not immediately answer specific questions regarding the issuance and approval of Boykin's invitation, but said the retired officer's "credentials as a Soldier and leader speak for themselves and his 36 years of service to our nation are worthy of our respect and admiration." However, citing Fort Riley's "diverse community," Lavigne said 1st ID "will pursue the invitation of a different speaker for the prayer breakfast once it is rescheduled.""

"That's not enough for Weinstein, who said his group fielded more than 131 complaints from military and civilian clients in the area after word of Boykin's invitation spread. "I have clients of ours weeping on the phone about this," he said. "[Army officials] have not admitted any fault. They don't indicate that they are going to investigate how this travesty, this unconstitutional travesty, happened, or their willingness to punish [those involved] to make sure it doesn't happen again. And we want all those things." Weinstein's group, which claims more than 41,500 clients, recently succeeded in efforts to remove Bibles from several "missing man table" displays, designed to honor prisoners of war and troops missing in action, that are located on military and Veterans Affairs Department property. Boykin, in a piece at the FRC Action website, called one VA official's decision to remove the Bible "disgraceful" and showed "a poor knowledge of the Constitution.""

"Noam Chomsky recently wrote that America thinks that it owns the world. That is definitely the view of the Bush administration. But the fact of the matter is that the US owes the world. The US “superpower” cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid. I sometimes wonder if the bankrupt “superpower” will be able to scrape together the resources to bring home the troops stationed in its hundreds of bases overseas, or whether they will just be abandoned."

"The US is not a superpower. The US is a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will."

"If we add state capitalism to the [[George W. Bush|[George W.] Bush]] administration’s success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government."

"All of America’s wars except the first—the war for independence — were wars for Empire. Keep that fact in mind as you hear the Memorial Day bloviations about the brave men and women who served our country in its times of peril."

"When a country armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and overwhelmed by its own exceptionalism and indispensability has political and media lunatics equating a bait-click commercial marketing scheme with Pearl Harbor, that country is a recipe for the end of the world."

"The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy."

"All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China. The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security."

"The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War."

"As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby."

"Paul Craig Roberts characterizes the resulting attitudes [of Western and U.S. intellectuals] as a "fusion of moral scepticism with the demand for moral perfection...""

"Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, has migrated from the Wall Street Journal editorial page to the world of 9/11 conspiracy theory and Putin worship."

"Roberts' history of false-flag assertions is certainly well known... Roberts' piece will intrigue that narrow readership fond of fact-lite, rancidly-posited dot-connecting exercises, and repel just about everyone else."

"We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east."

""You must tell them that there must be a new union or there will be chaos," he [Shevardnadze] implored me. That evening, when I hosted republic leaders for dinner — a mixed group of presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers — I saw around the table and in the conversation a microcosm of the post-coup Soviet Union’s potential — and its problems. Whatever euphoria that they felt with their post-putsch independence declarations had given way to a marked degree of realism. "Independence sounds nice, but we have to live, and we have to be practical," observed the Prime Minister of Moldova, Valeriu Muravsky. That was the persistent theme that I heard from every one of the republic leaders, with the sole exception of the Georgian Prime Minister, Vissarion Gugushvili, though even he spoke of the need for economic cooperation once Georgian independence was recognized internationally."

"My view is that you don't just talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies, as well. And the diplomacy involves talking to your enemies. You don't reward your enemies necessarily, by talking to them if you're tough and you know what you're doing. You don't appease them. Talking to an enemy is not, in my view, appeasement. I made 15 trips to Syria in 1990-1991 at a time when Syria was on the list of countries who are state sponsors of terrorism. And the 16th trip, guess what? Lo and behold, Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in history to come sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time. And, thereby, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. Now, all I'm saying is that would never have happened if we hadn't been sufficiently dedicated that we were going to keep at it."

"We're going to treat them [FOX News] the way we would treat an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

"What I think is fair to say about Fox — and certainly it’s the way we view it — is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party. They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is."

"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers - Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say, "Why not?". You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices, they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this, against all of the odds against you?" And Mao Zedong said, you know, "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine." And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other peoples choices and paths. Ok? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war, you lay out your own path, you figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definition define how good you are internally, you fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path."

"The Mao quote is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me. The use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat -- at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing."

"I might be better able to help parents of dying children, but for quite a while I felt less able, too emotionally involved. And from that time on, I could rarely discuss the death of a child without tears welling up into my eyes."

"Each day of those early years in pediatric surgery I felt I was on the cutting edge. Some of the surgical problems that landed on the operating table at Children's had not even been named. Many of the operations I performed had never been done before. It was an exuberant feeling, but also a little scary. At times I was troubled by fears that I wasn't doing things the right way, that I would have regrets, or that someone else had performed a certain procedure successfully but had never bothered to write it up for the medical journals, or if they had I couldn't find it."

"I think the top leadership challenge issue in our world today is how to deal with the continuing, growing population in the world and all the resource demands it places on the world and burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia that lack the resources to have a healthy, happy life."

"We’ve got to find a way to make the world work for everyone. Climate change is an issue that impacts [sic] that greatly by making it harder for people to live where they live, by causing disruptions, and lack of resources."

"If you want to appoint someone to help stop the spread of a lethal contagion, you would never think of Klain. But if you want to contain the Ebola episode so it stays as quiet as possible until after the election, he is the right guy for the job. Good luck to us all."

"Politicians use research findings the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not for illumination."

"Again, some of this stuff gets – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. The government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They sell bonds, yeah, they sell bonds. Right? Since they sell bonds, and people buy the bonds, and lend them the money. A lot of times, at least to my ear with MMT, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to um, uh … I guess I'm just, I can't really, I don't get it, I don't know what they're talking about. . . . It's like, the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise you wouldn't be having this debt and deficit conversation. So I don't think there's anything confusing there."

"And he knows the consequences: “War ruins everything, even the bonds between brothers. War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: It seeks to grow by destroying.”"

"Very few Americans—indeed very few Western leaders who, from time to time, use the word “war” and promise to “win” it—seem to recognize that a global war is being waged against us. Even the few who follow the actual combat tend to see the events separately: there’s fighting in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the Sinai, terrorists are at work all over the place, and we try to figure out what to do in each case."

"Most Americans mistakenly believe that peace is the normal condition of mankind, while war is some weird aberration. Actually, it’s the other way around. Most of human history has to do with war, and preparations for the next one. But we Americans do not prepare for the next war, are invariably surprised when it erupts, and, since we did not take prudent steps when it would have been relatively simple to prevail, usually end up fighting on our enemies’ more difficult and costly terms."

"One night at Socko and a year of probation were no comparison to the punishment at home. My rehabilitation was one of the fastest in adolescent history. I had it coming, and it taught me that moral rehab is possible. I behaved during my term of probation and stopped all of my criminal activity. But I would always retain my strong impulse to challenge authority and to think and act on my own whenever possible. There is room for such types in America, even in the disciplined confines of the United States Army. I’m a big believer in the value of unconventional men and women. They are the innovators and risk takers. Apple, one of the world’s most creative and successful high-tech companies, lives by the vision of transformation through exception. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” Apple’s campaign says. “The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” If you talk to my colleagues, they’ll tell you that I’m cut from the same cloth. My military biography starts badly. I was a miserable dropout in my freshman year of college (1.2 GPA), enlisted in a delayed-entry Marine Corps program, went to work as a lifeguard at a local beach, and then came the first of several miracles: an Army ROTC scholarship. Little did I know that my rebellious activities, such as skipping class and sundry other mistakes, would lead me to playing basketball (which I was very good at) with an ROTC instructor who saw something in me. Not only that, he took surprising initiative."

"The U.S. media is doing a bang-up job of reporting the Erdoğan government’s crackdown on dissidents, but it’s not putting it into perspective."

"We must begin with understanding that Turkey is vital to U.S. interests. Turkey is really our strongest ally against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as well as a source of stability in the region. It provides badly needed cooperation with U.S. military operations. But the Obama administration is keeping Erdoğan’s government at arm’s length — an unwise policy that threatens our long-standing alliance."

"The primary bone of contention between the U.S. and Turkey is Fethullah Gülen, a shady Islamic residing in Pennsylvania whom former President Clinton once called his “friend” in a well circulated video."

"Lock her up, that's right. Yeah, that's right, lock her up! I'm going to tell you what, it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable. If I did a tenth, a tenth, of what she did, I would be in jail today."

"My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the special counsel’s office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions."

"Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a Trump national security adviser, has been paid by Turkish money laundered through a Dutch company to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government. More than bad judgement, Flynn’s egregious conduct raises ethical questions. It also casts doubt on his suitability for public office."

"Flynn’s pro-Turkish positions compound concerns arising from his judgement and ethical lapse."

"Business as usual is over. And I think what I mean by that is that you know, the President-elect looks at this and says what’s best for the country? How do we put America and Americans first and stop trying to figure out how we cater to you know, pundits and the establishment class, big donors. He is putting Americans first and foremost. And when he talks about Americans first, he means I don’t care what a bunch of elites tell me or people at a dinner party. He wants to know what American workers care about, what American families care about, what’s going to help American businesses grow."

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration -- period -- both in person and around the globe."

"I think sometimes we can disagree with the facts ... But our intention is never to lie to you."

"To assume someone because of their age or gender, that they don't pose a threat, would be wrong."

"The President had a very cordial conversation with Prime Minister Trumble..."

"So he has ensured that while he has respect for the Australian people, respect for Prime Minister Trumble..."

"The President had an incredibly productive set of meetings and discussions with Prime Minister Joe Trudeau of Canada"

"White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who was a commander in the Naval Reserves, tried several times to persuade Mattis to appear on Sunday talk shows on behalf of the administration. The answer was always no. "Sean," Mattis finally said, "I've killed people for a living. If you call me again, I'm going to fucking send you to Afghanistan. Are we clear?""

"On a purely intellectual level, how does allowing China to constantly rig trade in its favor advance the core conservative goal of making markets more efficient? Markets do not run better when manufacturing shifts to China largely because of the actions of its government. Nor do they become more efficient when Chinese companies are given special privileges in global markets, while American companies must struggle to compete with unfairly traded goods."

"Given the current financial crisis and the widespread belief that the 21st century will belong to China, is free trade really making global markets more efficient? Is it promoting our values and making America stronger? Or is it simply strengthening our adversaries and creating a world where countries who abuse the system - such as China - are on the road to economic and military dominance? If Mr. Trump’s potential campaign does nothing more than force a real debate on those questions, it will have done a service to both the Republican Party and the country."

"It is a very high honor to represent our nation and to serve in President-elect Trump’s administration as the U.S. Trade Representative. I am fully committed to President-elect Trump’s mission to level the playing field for American workers and forge better trade policies which will benefit all Americans"

"Ambassador Lighthizer is going to do an outstanding job representing the United States as we fight for good trade deals that put the American worker first. He has extensive experience striking agreements that protect some of the most important sectors of our economy, and has repeatedly fought in the private sector to prevent bad deals from hurting Americans. He will do an amazing job helping turn around the failed trade policies which have robbed so many Americans of prosperity"

"What you’re seeing is the emergence of Trump Democrats – you know, Democrats who realize that Democratic policies have failed them, that Hillary Clinton and these Democrats continue to be full of hot air, and they want substance. And they know that Donald Trump is a man who has built an empire, this business empire that is just incredible. And he has hired Americans for jobs, and he has employed folks, whereas his opponent has never written a check, or signed a paycheck for anyone, you know, because she’s worked for the government, and has never really created jobs, and knows how to do that. If they want true leadership where they’ll see results, if they want true leadership where people are no longer just telling them what she thinks they want to hear, someone who’s actually going to implement the change that we need in this country–and knowing him for the last 13, 14 years, I can tell you that that right person, that person who can bring about that change, is Donald J. Trump."

"I think we’re always going to have to operate as part of a multinational force. To do so, we have to understand the history and the culture of each of these conflicts and of the microconflicts in each subregion. Obviously, our multinational partners are invaluable for their perspectives, but we also need strong partnerships with indigenous leaders. As in business, we need negotiation competencies and the ability to map stakeholder interests in particular. When we’re partnering with somebody we need to understand several things: their interests, how they align with our interests, how to build relationships based on mutual trust and common purpose, and how to use those relationships to work together to accomplish the mission."

"Even in the United States and in other free nations, some journalists, academics, public officials, and saddest of all young people have developed and promulgated idealized, warped views of tyrannical regimes."

"In the White House, you never worry about the law. I never worried about the law, about breaking the law. This never entered my mind, and I doubt it ever entered the minds of people who asked me to do things - maybe for a little bit after Nixon resigned, but it evaporated almost immediately. My thinking was, if the President wants it done, it's right. I never questioned it. It never occurred to me that some sheriff might show up someday with a warrant."

"I learned a long time ago never to press where there's something you want to know. Show little interest in the subject, never ask questions, don't make people start asking themselves why you want to know. That way, sooner or later, you'll find out."

"Whatever your opinion of the post-9/11 wars, the need to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, none of that changes the decades old strategy and ideology of Global Jihad. Long before there was a Bush in the White House, Muslims with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam declared war on all that is Un-Islamic, be it located in the Middle East, Europe or the US. Theirs is a totalitarian ideology, as universalist and absolute as anything Hitler or Stalin came up with, albeit with a holy sanction and promise of salvation. We are in their crosshairs as much as Assad, Maliki, or Sisi. Either everyone must live under Islamic law in a Caliphate, or they must die. Whether they live in a Christian enclave in Norther Iraq, or Washington, New York, or Houston."

"They want to take your pickup truck! They want to rebuild your home! They want to take away your hamburgers! This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved!"

"The NRA is the most important organization protecting our rights to defend ourselves and our democracy in America."

"If you write, you should write about the truth."

"For me being an American is an attitude, a state of mind."

"Our biggest problem as a civilization since the 1960s is that we do not know who we are and we’ve allowed those who actually have disdain for our civilization to gain control of our culture."

"Well, at HHS, like the rest of the executive branch, you have to faithfully execute the laws that are given to us by Congress. That's the ultimate role. So, the laws that we have to execute in our relationship to the [Affordable Care Act] or any other law is that we're supposed to faithfully execute it. Now, given how Congress drafts laws, there are parameters in there. So, we take direction from the president on down to try to figure out exactly how those laws are supposed to work at the level to make sure that we do the best that we can for the American people with regard to making sure that they get good healthcare and options on how they arrange their own healthcare themselves."

"It's sort of root and branch, some of our agencies are taking. Every single regulation they have ever done, they are looking at it over and over again, and hopefully, sometimes it's gonna be cleaning things out. There are regulations that are no longer used, right? Does that have an effect? Maybe not, but at least it's some sort of process where we get rid of setting standards for things that don't even exist anymore. All of this allows us to redirect resources from this useless amount of compliance, the time we spend and they spend on dealing with this and redirect it to providing resources and care to where it should be directed. When you look at it, we say we're giving billions of dollars to a hospital; they may be able to hire more nurses or doctors or buy more drugs, be able to provide more charity care. They are gonna be able to liberate those resources and put them where they're supposed to go. It's a benefit on jobs as well."

"Then the young samurai's mother had the child sold to a brothel, where she swept the floors and oiled the women and watched the secret ways. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who have been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky white."

"Michelle was so mature beyond her years, so thoughtful and perceptive. She really prodded me about what the job would be like because she had lots of choices. I offered it to her on the spot, which was totally inappropriate because I should have talked to the mayor first. But I just knew she was really special. Barack never grills. That's part of what is so effective about him: He puts you completely at ease, and the next thing you know he's asking more and more probing questions and gets you to open up and reflect a little bit. That night we talked about his childhood compared to my childhood and realized we both had rather…unusual childhoods. Married in 1983, separated in 1987, and divorced in 1988. Enough said. He was a physician. He passed away. I want to say in about 1991. We grew up together. We were friends since childhood. In a sense, he was the boy next door. I married without really appreciating how hard divorce would be. I have to tell you: My daughter is in seventh heaven about me being in Vogue. Nothing else I have done has fazed her at all. But this! She's like, 'Oh, Mom. You don't understand. This is really big.' I have never heard him yell,Ever. Not once in seventeen years. He's not a yeller. Because my dad worked at the university, he could swing by and take Laura to school and pick her up from her first day of nursery school until the day she graduated from high school. They would often have breakfast and have these wonderful conversations."

"@ValerieJarrett i don't know if u saw it, but I wanted2 apologize to u 4 hurting and upsetting u with an insensitive & tasteless tweet. I am truly sorry-my whole life has been about fighting racism. I made a terrible mistake wh caused hundreds of ppl 2 lose their jobs. so sorry!"

"Hi, this is Roseanne Barr and I'd like to welcome you to my own studio, where I'm able to speak for myself to my fellow and sister Americans without the filter of the biased media," she said. "This was my statement from the very beginning and it will continue to be forever because it is the truth. When ABC called and asked me to explain my 'egregious and unforgivable tweet,' I told them I thought Valerie Jarrett was white. And I also said, 'I'm willing to go on The View, Jimmy Kimmel, or whatever other show you want me to go on and explain that to my audience.'"

"I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again."

"The order appointing me special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation and kept the office of the acting Attorney General apprised of the progress of our work. After that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime. The introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision."

"After September 11th, you had core al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan with (Osama) bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed. You have al Qaeda growing in countries like Somalia, but most particularly in Yemen. And there's still substantial threat out of Yemen. And now you have the countries in the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Mali; Egypt most recently, where they're breeding grounds for radical extremists who may not stay there, but may present an attack. And, finally, you have, within the United States, the growth of homegrown, radicalized extremists who are radicalized on the Internet and then get their instructions for developing explosives on the Internet, as well."

"I think there's a good chance we would have prevented at least a part of 9/11. In other words, there were four planes. There were almost 20 — 19 persons involved. I think we would have had a much better chance of identifying those individuals who were contemplating that attack."

"I would query about what do you mean in terms of civil liberties. ... Do we exchange information in ways we did not before? Absolutely. You can say that that is a — to the extent that you exchange information between CIA, FBI, NSA and the like — you could characterize that as somehow giving up liberties. But the fact of the matter is, it's understandable and absolutely necessary if you want to protect the security of the United States."

"When we had these African bombings of those embassies, we had an intelligence service in there that helped us. We had law enforcement agencies that helped us. We had access. In Libya, you have a government that does not control most of Libya, or a good portion of Libya. And consequently, the ambassador, the State Department, ourselves — were pushing to get in there at the earliest possible moment. And that ended up being a couple of weeks down the road. But that does not mean that we have not very thoroughly investigated that and are continuing to investigate it. And I do believe the persons responsible will be brought to justice."

"I think we're certainly vulnerable when it comes to the type of information that is out there. The type of information that is out there and available to those that want to find it and want to damage and harm to us. We're also to a certain extent vulnerable by the fact that we live by the rules passed by Congress. If I want to get an application before the court to intercept somebody's conversations, I have to show probable cause to believe that person is affiliated with a terrorist group. And if I don't get the probable cause, I can't do it. And we've had instances, Awlaki, a relatively famous individual exporter of the type of terrorism we've seen in the United States, was doing videos for a substantial period of time before the Fort Hood shooting, and it was only after that that we found out he was involved in the operations. Any other country, they may well have been up on his wire beforehand, because there's no responsibility of showing a court that there's probable cause to believe that this individual is involved in terrorist activities."

"You really don't think about it as you go through it; you just try to do the right thing at the right time."

"Being a FBI agent, being a police officer in Denver, Aurora, or any community is a tremendously rewarding job. To a certain extent, it goes up and down. It can be thankless as well. But you're really serving your community if you're serving as a police officer. I prosecuted homicide cases in Washington for almost three years, where I spent much, if not most of my time in the courtrooms along with homicide victims' families and the like, and it tears apart a community, and there's no more valuable function to the safety and security of the community than the police forces."

"The problem with training is it's the last thing on the budget list. It's the first thing to get cut. And it should not be."

"Cyberbullying, I know, it's being handled, generally, on the state side with state legislation. I look at it, frankly, as a father with children, with their ability to use Facebook and the like, knowing that anything you put on Facebook is going to be there and be there and be there. And who at that age understands the consequences of doing something when you're 16 that may come back to haunt you when you're 25 and you're seeking a job not in the private sector, necessarily, but in the public sector that you really want but some of the things that you've said or done or taken back then preclude you from exploring those options."

"[T]he Special Counsel regulations effectively gave me the role of . As a result, we structured our investigation around evidence for possible use in prosecution of federal crimes. We did not reach... conclusions. We did, however, set up processes... to identify and pass counterintelligence information... to the FBI. Members of our office periodically briefed the FBI about counterintelligence information. In addition, there were agents and analysts from the FBI who were not on our team, but whose job it was to identify counterintelligence information in our files, and to disseminate that information to the FBI. With these reasons, questions about what the FBI has done with the counterintelligence information obtained from our investigation should be directed to the FBI."

"Second) the Justice Department has asserted privileges concerning investigative information and decisions, ongoing matters within the Justice Department, and deliberations within our office. These are Justice Department privileges that I will respect. The department has released a letter discussing the restrictions on my testimony. I therefore will not be able to answer questions about certain areas... of public interest. For example, I am unable to address questions about the opening of the FBI's Russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment, or matters related to the... Steele dossier. These matters are the subject of ongoing review by the department. Any questions on these topics should therefore be directed to the FBI, or the Justice Department."

"Finally) ...over the course of my career I have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government's efforts to interfere in our election is among the most serious..."

"It's Mueller Time."

"Mueller Ain't Going Away"

"Trump's cavalier attitude toward the Russian security threat has had a predictable yet devastating consequence. Moscow has not been deterred from attacking American interests. It has been emboldened. They continue to take advantage of the United States, around the world and on our own soil. Former director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified in January 2019 that Russia was still sowing social, racial, and political discord in the United States through influence operations, and several months later, Robert Mueller said the same. "It wasn't a single attempt," he testified to Congress. "They're doing it as we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign." This should be a national scandal, a cause for outrage and action against the Russian government. Instead, it's being ignored where it should matter most- in the Oval Office. Reporters asked Trump about Mueller's assessment days later and quizzed him again on whether he'd pressed Putin on the topic. "You don't really believe this," he shot back. "Do you believe this? Okay, fine. We didn't talk about it." Then he boarded Marine One."

"Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!"

"In addition to his politically incorrect rhetoric, Trump seems so much like a foreign policy radical because he is tampering with long-held maxims. One such maxim is that China should not be taken on directly."

"This is a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology, and the United States hasn’t had that before, it’s also striking that this is the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian."

"Our implementation of this historic MOU reflects the enduring and unshakable commitment of the President, this Administration, and the American people to Israel’s security. The MOU was negotiated under the previous Administration, reflecting the bi-partisan nature of this commitment. Israel is a valuable and capable ally to the United States that today faces dangerously escalating regional threats, first and foremost from the Iranian regime’s sponsorship of terrorist groups seeking to attack not only Israel but also American interests."

"What you may not know is that last year, in its finite wisdom, the D.C. City Council passed a new law, or a triumph of animal rights over human health, where those pest control people you suggested they bring in aren’t allowed to kill the rats. They have to relocate the rats and not only that — that’s actually not the worst part — they cannot break up the families of the rats. Now, as actual experts in pest control will tell you, if you don’t move an animal at least 25 miles, it’ll come back. And so what’s the solution to that? Well, cross a river....Anyway, it is worse than our immigration policy — you can’t break up rat families. Or raccoons or all the rest and you can’t even kill them. It’s unbelievable."

"Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, the third paragraph, lists some things that the states can do and under certain circumstances. And it says that no state shall enter into war without the permission of Congress unless they are actually invaded. Well, here it comes. And there are several interesting aspects of that.First of all, we’ve been being invaded for a long time and so the border states clearly qualify here to utilize this power themselves. And what’s interesting is they don’t need anyone’s permission. They can do it themselves. And because they’re acting under war powers, there’s no due process. They can literally just line their National Guard up with, presumably with riot gear like they would if they had a civil disturbance and turn people back at the border. Literally, you don’t have to keep them, no catch and release, no nothing. You just point them back across the river and let them swim for it. Maybe you have a little courtesy shuttle and drive them over and leave them there. And the states can do that, interestingly enough, and the federal government can’t. But it really becomes a question of do they want to utilize this power or not....When someone comes across your border without your permission, it’s an invasion. Their purpose here is to violate the border, to violate our sovereignty, for their own purposes. That’s an invasion. And here, I don’t think with the caravan it’s even debatable because you’ve got an entire group that’s organized itself to come into the country."

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge....No one has a right to become an American who isn't born here as an American."

"Watched the clip again and would like to reiterate that Ken Cuccunnelli is a racist who doesn’t understand the first thing about America."

"Ken Cuccinelli just gave the game away. Racism is the point of their policy."

"Putin now believes it is time to concentrate on strengthening Russia internally. In his annual “Message to the Federal Assembly” (the Russian equivalent of a State of the Union Message) in December 2012, Putin barely mentioned the outside world. The international system, he suggested, is fraught with risk for Russia, not opportunity. Russians, Putin commanded, need to turn inward. They should look to patriotism, not Westernism; to solidarity, not individualism; to spirituality, not consumerism and moral decay."

"Putin firmly opposes U.S. policy toward Syria and the threat of force against Iran. But his opposition stems neither from anti-Americanism nor a desire to back the Iranian mullahs or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in their struggles with the West. It is rooted in his obsession with stability. Helping Tehran secure a nuclear weapon and keeping Assad in Damascus are not Putin’s goals. But an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, and NATO or the United Nations intervening in Syria to forcibly remove Assad, would increase global volatility."

"When you look at Russia today, you have to try to imagine to yourself "What would a country look like if it was run by a former KGB agent?" — and I think what we're seeing today, with all kinds of clandestine activity, all kinds of mysterious men … taking over Crimea, the peninsula attached to Ukraine, and affecting the situation on the ground so that later Russia can annex it — and then the kind of speeches that we've heard coming out of President Vladimir Putin about the justification of Russia's takeover or Crimea, going back into the long history of grievances against the west, dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even going back many centuries before, really, a long perspective on Russian history, this is the kind of thing you would have imagined from someone who has seen themself as a servant of the state, and as someone from an institution that sees themselves as the defender of that state. The KGB used to think of itself as the sword and the shield of the system of the state, the Soviet State — and then the Russian state after it collapsed. That is the emblem of the KGB."

"Our problem is that we do not fully understand Putin’s calculus, just as he does not understand ours. In Putin’s view, the United States, the European Union and NATO have launched an economic and proxy war in Ukraine to weaken Russia and push it into a corner. As Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, has underscored, this is a hybrid, 21st-century conflict, in which financial sanctions, support for oppositional political movements and propaganda have all been transformed from diplomatic tools to instruments of war. Putin likely believes that any concession or compromise he makes will encourage the West to push further."

"Putin was personally angered by events in Libya and the death of President Mammar Qaddafi at the hands of rebels as Qaddafi tried to flee Tripoli after NATO’s intervention in the civil war there. In Putin’s view (again expressed openly in his public addresses and in interviews), the United States was now responsible for a long sequence of revolutions close to Russia’s borders and in countries with close ties to Moscow."

"I appreciate the importance of the Congress’s impeachment inquiry. I am appearing today as a fact witness, as I did during my deposition on October 14th, in order to answer your questions about what I saw, what I did, what I knew, and what I know with regard to the subjects of your inquiry. I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and moral obligation to provide it. I take great pride in the fact that I am a nonpartisan foreign policy expert, who has served under three different Republican and Democratic presidents. I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth."

"I would like to communicate two things. First, I’d like to share a bit about who I am. I am an American by choice, having become a citizen in 2002. I was born in the northeast of England, in the same region George Washington’s ancestors came from. Both the region and my family have deep ties to the United States. My paternal grandfather fought through World War I in the Royal Field Artillery, surviving being shot, shelled, and gassed before American troops intervened to end the war in 1918. During the Second World War, other members of my family fought to defend the free world from fascism alongside American soldiers, sailors, and airmen. The men in my father’s family were coalminers whose families always struggled with poverty. When my father, Alfred, was 14, he joined his father, brother, uncles and cousins in the coal mines to help put food on the table. When the last of the local mines closed in the 1960s, my father wanted to emigrate to the United States to work in the coal mines in West Virginia, or in Pennsylvania. But his mother, my grandmother, had been crippled from hard labor. My father couldn’t leave, so he stayed in northern England until he died in 2012. My mother still lives in my hometown today. While his dream of emigrating to America was thwarted, my father loved America, its culture, its history and its role as a beacon of hope in the world. He always wanted someone in the family to make it to the United States."

"I began my University studies in 1984, and in 1987 I won a place on an academic exchange to the Soviet Union. I was there for the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and when President Ronald Reagan met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. This was a turning point for me. An American professor who I met there told me about graduate student scholarships to the United States, and the very next year, thanks to his advice, I arrived in America to start my advanced studies at Harvard. Years later, I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I never would have had in England. I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America. For the better part of three decades, I have built a career as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical national security professional focusing on Europe and Eurasia and especially the former Soviet Union."

"I have served our country under three presidents: in my most recent capacity under President Trump, as well as in my former position of National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In that role, I was the Intelligence Community’s senior expert on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine."

"Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified. The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined. U.S. support for Ukraine — which continues to face armed Russian aggression — has been politicized."

"The Russian government’s goal is to weaken our country — to diminish America’s global role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and economic dominance. I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we counter their efforts to harm us. Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests. As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy."

"I respect the work that this Congress does in carrying out its constitutional responsibilities, including in this inquiry, and I am here to help you to the best of my ability. If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm. I am ready to answer your questions.'"

"This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.”"

"Hill conflated two separate theories of Ukrainian collusion in the 2016 election. One of these is discredited, the other is quite viable. Hill helped the Democrats suggest that they have both been debunked. Hill is too smart not to have grasped the effect of her testimony. This is exactly the kind of cynicism that fuels concerns about the unaccountable “deep state.""

"Hill has been conditioned to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin and especially his security services are capable of anything, and thus sees a Russian under every rock — as we used to say of smart know-nothings ... A modicum of intellectual curiosity and rudimentary due diligence would have prompted her to look into who was in charge of preparing the (misnomered) “Intelligence Community Assessment” published on Jan. 6, 2017, which provided the lusted-after fodder for the “mainstream” media and others wanting to blame Hillary Clinton’s defeat on the Russians."

"If U.S. Attorney John Durham is allowed to do his job probing the origins of Russiagate, and succeeds in getting access to the “handpicked analysts” — whether there were just two, or more — Hill’s faith in “our intelligence agencies,” may well be dented if not altogether shattered."

"On Thursday Fiona Hill, the former White House Russia expert, was all business, a serious woman you don’t want to mess with. She reoriented things, warning that those who excuse or don’t wish to see Russian propaganda efforts against America, and targeting its elections, are missing the obvious. The suspicion of the president and his allies that Ukraine is the great culprit in the 2016 election is a "fictional narrative." They are, in fact, bowing to disinformation Russia spreads to cover its tracks and confuse the American people and its political class. She dismissed the president’s operatives' efforts to get Ukraine’s new president to investigate his country’s alleged meddling as a "domestic political errand." She and other diplomats were "involved in national security, foreign policy," and the interests of the operatives and the diplomats had "diverged." She warned Mr. Sondland: "This is all going to blow up.""

"Likewise, his (President Trump's) boss on the National Security Council Staff, Fiona Hill, sounded more like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with her heated Cold War rhetoric... And who gets to decide US foreign policy objectives in Europe? Not the US President, according to government bureaucrat Fiona Hill... Who was Fiona Hill’s boss? Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who no doubt agreed that the president has no right to change US foreign policy."

"Folks, we are getting just plain sick and tired of this drumbeat of lies, misdirection and smug condescension by Washington payrollers like Fiona Hill. No Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US election? Exactly what hay wagon does she think we fell off from?"

"This time it was Dr. Fiona Hill who sanctimoniously advised the House committee that there is nothing to see on the Ukraine front that involved any legitimate matter of state; it was just the Donald and his tinfoil hat chums jeopardizing the serious business of protecting the national security by injecting electioneering into relations with Ukraine."

"Yet Fiona Hill sat before a House committee and under oath insisted that all of the above was a Trumpian conspiracy theory, thereby reminding us that the neocon Russophobes are so unhinged that they are prepared to lie at the drop of a hat to keep their false narrative about the Russian Threat and Putin’s “invasion” of Ukraine alive. Needless to say, Fiona Hill is among the worst of the neocon warmongers, and has made a specialty of demonizing Russia and propagating over and over flat out lies about what happened in Kiev during 2014 and after."

"This is another remnant for Bush neocon team, a protégé of Bolton. Trump probably voluntarily appointed this rabid neocon, a chickenhawk who would shine in Hillary State Department."

"If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on and you're doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences."

"This (George W. Bush regime) is really a very inept administration... As a teacher who's studied every administration since 1945, I think this is probably the worst ineptitude in governance, decision-making and leadership I've seen in 50-plus years. You've got to go back and think about that. That includes the Bay of Pigs, that includes -- oh my God, Vietnam. That includes Iran-contra, Watergate... My wife would probably shoot me if I headed to the ballot box with a Republican vote again. This is not a Republican administration, not in my view. This is a radical administration."

"He (Colin Powell) walked into my office, and he said to me... 'I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground, and scour Iraq from one corner to the other, and find no weapons of mass destruction?' And he left that rhetorical question hanging in the air as he went back into his office."

"I can tell you that having been intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council, neither of those dissents in any fashion or form were registered with me or the Secretary by the DCI, George Tenent, by the DDCI, John McLaughlin, or by any of their many analysts who were in the room with us for those five, six days and nights at the Central Intelligence Agency... In fact it was presented in the firmest language possible that the mobile biological labs and the sketches we had drawn of them for the Secretary's presentation were based on the iron clad evidence of multiple sources."

"I am astonished at the failures of our intelligence community over the-- last decade in particular. We failed to predict the demise of the Soviet Union. We failed to predict the Indian nuclear test in 1998. We bombed a Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. We failed to detect the five year planning cycle of al Qaeda, the operatives who conducted 9/11. And we failed in terms of predicting Iraq's WMDs. So we have a significant problem in this nation with our intelligence community."

"We've had a decision that the Constitution as read by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and a few other very selected administration lawyers doesn't pertain the way it has pertained for 200-plus years. A very ahistorical reading of the Constitution... This is not the way America was intended to be run by its founders and it is not the interpretation of the Constitution that any of the founders as far as I read the Federalist Papers and other discussions about their views would have subscribed to. This is an interpretation of the constitution that is outlandish and as I said, clearly ahistorical."

"Cobra pilots and some of my colleagues in the Loach platoon (during the Vietnam War) treated that as a license to shoot anything that moved: wild boar, tigers, elephants, people. It didn’t matter... I personally followed the rules.. that had been ingrained in me by my parents, by my schools, by my church, and by the U.S. Army in classes about the Geneva Conventions and what we called the law of land warfare. I had been taught and I firmly believed when I took the oath of an officer and swore to support and defend the Constitution, that American soldiers were different and that much of their fighting strength and spirit came from that difference and that much of that difference was wrapped up in our humaneness and our respect for the rights of all."

"We have damaged our reputation in the world and thus reduced our power. We were once seen as the paragon of law; we are now in many corners of the globe the laughing stock of the law."

"The real reason for his (Senator Jim DeMint) and other politicians’– including some Democrats–reasoning with regard to (supporting the coup which ousted Zelaya in) Honduras. In their reasoning, AT&T and other U.S. business interests play heavily, perhaps even more heavily than democracy? Likewise for long-standing and nefarious U.S. ties to the Honduran military establishment."

"A single senator’s ability to effect such holds is lunacy gone amuck in any regard; but Jim DeMint gives that state of affairs new meaning altogether. He is holding up a refurbishment of U.S. foreign policy in our own hemisphere–and in the name, he says, of a coup d’etat in Honduras, a coup that he apparently supports... that, according to him and not the people of Honduras, brought a better leader to the helm of Honduras. In defense of his position, Senator DeMint writes in the Wall Street Journal that “America’s Founding Fathers–like the framers of Honduras’s own constitution–believed strong institutions were necessary to defend freedom and democracy from the ambitions of would-be tyrants and dictators.” I do not believe that the likes of George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin would have included coup d’etats in their listing of “strong institutions.” And, of course, nothing is said in DeMint’s article about the real reason for his (Senator Jim DeMint) and other politicians’– including some Democrats–reasoning with regard to (supporting the coup which ousted Zelaya in) Honduras. In their reasoning, AT&T and other U.S. business interests play heavily, perhaps even more heavily than democracy? Likewise for long-standing and nefarious U.S. ties to the Honduran military establishment."

"There are several dimensions to the debate over the U.S. prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the media have largely missed and, thus, of which the American people are almost completely unaware. For that matter, few within the government who were not directly involved are aware either... Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.... The second dimension that is largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."

"My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people, not all of them, but most of them, who are still basing their decision on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that's despicable."

"I think Snowden has done a service... I wouldn’t have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it... There’s a logic to what he has done that is impressive... He really has refrained from anything that was truly dangerous, with regard to our security — regardless of what people say. He has been circumspect about what he's released, how he's released it, who he's released it to. It’s clear to me from listening to his personal statements — I think those are important — that he did have a genuinely altruistic motive for doing it... Snowden seems to me to be pure as a driven snow. You can be dangerous if you're that way, but you can also be helpful. And I think he's been more helpful than dangerous."

"Just over a month ago, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said that the administration had “undeniable” evidence... As I watched Ms. Haley... I wanted to play the video of Mr. Powell on the wall behind her, so that Americans could recognize instantly how they were being driven down the same path as in 2003 — ultimately to war. Only this war with Iran, a country of almost 80 million people whose vast strategic depth and difficult terrain make it a far greater challenge than Iraq, would be 10 to 15 times worse than the Iraq war in terms of casualties and costs."

"As I look back at our lock-step march toward war with Iraq, I realize that it didn’t seem to matter to us that we used shoddy or cherry-picked intelligence; that it was unrealistic to argue that the war would “pay for itself,” rather than cost trillions of dollars; that we might be hopelessly naïve in thinking that the war would lead to democracy instead of pushing the region into a downward spiral. The sole purpose of our actions was to sell the American people on the case for war with Iraq. Polls show that we did. Mr. Trump and his team are trying to do it again. If we’re not careful, they’ll succeed."

"So all of this right now, first and foremost, is a budget ploy. They want more money. ...The military just hooks up, like it’s hooking up to an intravenous I.V. system and the money just pours out— slush fund money, appropriated money, and everything else. This is all about money and it’s all about keeping the complex alive, which the military was scared to death would disappear as we begin to pay the American people back. George H.W. Bush called it a peace dividend after the Cold War’s end. We found terrorism and terrorism we milked, and milked, and milked, and we’re still milking it to a certain extent, but terrorism doesn’t last. And besides that, terrorism is a tool. It’s not an animate enemy. China is an animate enemy. And so everything China does, is gonna be perceived by the Pentagon as threatening."

"I don’t give the leadership in the Pentagon a lot of credit for smarts these days either—not the chairman, not the Joint Chiefs, not the service chiefs as service chiefs. They’re just not very smart people; no imagination at all. And what we’re doing here is just fulfilling history’s mandate, if you will. We will fight, therefore, let’s go ahead and fight. I actually heard someone say the other day, an otherwise sane and sober person, it’s better to fight them now than to wait later because later they’ll be better. Well my question was, why fight them at all?"

"If I have any disdain for a particular political party in the Congress of the United States other than the Republicans, it is for the Democrats. I have never seen such a feckless, cowardly, incompetent, inept group of people— from Charles Schumer to Nancy Pelosi— across the board in the Congress. They have no guts whatsoever, no courage whatsoever. That’s one reason my party, which I don’t fault for courage and I don’t fault for ruthlessness, even disgusting ruthlessness, beats them all the time. Mitch McConnell has no qualms about sticking daggers in people’s back and twisting them while he smiles, but the Democrats seem to have no courage, no ruthlessness, no “I’m going to get you” about them. And you can say, well that’s a positive. In American politics, that’s not a positive."

"This (a war with Iran) would be a vicious, long-term guerrilla campaign waged by the Iranians over 10 or 15 years... And it would cost $2 trillion and lots of lives and more than anything else, it would require at least a half a million troops. No allies are going to join us. I’ll go to my grave regretting the death of every soldier and sailor, marine and airmen in Iraq and... three hundred thousand or so plus civilians and millions that have been displaced."

"Democrats need to get their act together... they need to do things like not just talk about prohibiting the president from using military force against Iran without congressional authorization. They need to scare the bejesus out of him if there’s any way to do that, and say, “We will cut everything off immediately if you use force against Iran without our permission.” And then they need to think hard about whether or not they’re going to give permission."

"Well, we’ve got 330 million Americans 280 million of whom I’m convinced, are ignorant, apathetic, fearful, etc, etc. And you tell them anything, and they’ll believe it. And if you give them the politics of fear, as a daily food, they will believe you. They will go along with you."

"We have just, as we did with torture from 2002 to 2007, 2008, as we substantiated for the world that torture was OK, we have now OK’d the killing of recognized members of other states’ government. That’s what Soleimani was, no matter how heinous we may paint him... We have become the law of the jungle, rather than, as we have been since 1945, the greatest supporter of international law and the rule of law in general across the face of the globe. With torture and with killing other state recognized individuals of their government, we have become the tiger, the lion, the bear, the alligator in that jungle. It’s not a very, very good precedent to have set, as the Russians indicated. The Chinese have said similar things. It’s a terrible precedent to have set. America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what the American Empire is. We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now, as Trump is doing right now, as Tom Cotton is doing right now, and a host of other members of my political party, the Republicans, are doing right now. We are going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That’s the truth of it. And that’s the agony of it."

"The leadership in Tehran is far more rational than the leadership in Washington... to say that Soleimani, himself personally, was an imminent threat is, as I said before, laughable. And the fact that Esper and Pompeo, who have some manner of expertise in military affairs, are saying these things makes them even more egregious liars than otherwise. If John Kerry got up there and said something like that, or if Warren Christopher got up there and said something of that, Kerry even with his Vietnam experience, you could give them a little bit of leeway. But these guys are supposed to be experts in the very fields that they’re talking about. They’re anything but experts. They are warmongers. They are warmongers par excellence."

"Mike Pompeo and Vice President Pence, they both long for the rapture, for the end times, for Jesus coming down to the Earth and killing all the unbelievers with his flaming sword. This is what they are all about. This is why they allowed the embassy to move to Jerusalem. Go back and check the remarks that were made at that time, the prayers that were given and so forth. This is, in a word, a very different U.S. administration, but in the same hands of the military-industrial complex, of the national security state, of all the people who want warfare to be the raison d’être of this empire at the same time."

"I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council."

"For almost half a century, U.S. policy with respect to Cuba has failed—miserably."

"While we have significant relations on almost every level with Communist countries 10,000 miles away such as China and Vietnam, we have almost no relations with the 11 million souls on an island 90 miles off our southern coast where all this dynamism is beginning to show."

"Because of our failed Cuba policy, we miss valuable opportunities to share Cuba’s rapidly growing store of knowledge and expertise in, for example, how to deliver high quality healthcare to deeply impoverished areas. Moreover, we are missing opportunities to explore mutual interests in vaccine development, to share in Cuba’s extraordinary wealth of experience in combating hurricanes and the floods that often accompany them, to explore together Cuba’s continental shelf for fossil fuels, and to sell our agricultural products in a more cost-effective and profitable way to an island population that needs these products and would benefit greatly from the shortened transits and thus reduced expenses."

"A rapprochement with Cuba would create the same opening in Latin America that a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian situation would create in the Middle East. I am not sufficiently naïve to believe that either development would meet all regional challenges or solve all problems, but both would be a dramatic and effective start. Both would give America a decisive leg-up on regaining some of the prestige and power we have squandered in the past seven years."

"Military power is the least likely instrument of national power to be successful if you decide to use it. A corollary truth with great relevance to Cuba is that sanctions, embargoes, closing embassies and withdrawing ambassadors, the silent treatment, branding other countries as evil and advocating and supporting regime change—all of these methods, even if actually backed by strong military power and the threat to use it, rarely work and, even when they appear to do so, the results they produce are usually negative and even when they are positive, are almost never long-lasting."

"Let's examine just two of the extremely negative impacts of our almost half-century of failure vis-à-vis Cuba: The U.S. has reconciled with the Communist governments in China and Vietnam. We support dictators throughout Central Asia under the strategic mantra of "contact and influence is better than isolation". We talked to the Communist Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. But we cannot bring ourselves to deal with Havana and have maintained that failed policy for almost half a century. It is simply absurd to continue to do so."

"The export of revolution at the behest of the Soviets has been transformed into the export of healthcare at the behest of the Cuban people. When I visited Cuba this past March, this was one of the areas of Cuban activity on which I focused—the delivery of first-class healthcare to impoverished people in Cuba, in Venezuela and elsewhere in South and Central America, and increasingly in sub-Saharan Africa."

"We could learn much from how the Cubans deliver healthcare particularly applicable to our rural areas and our inner cities where impoverished people predominate. And in the process, the contact would benefit Cubans. They would be able to study what is strong and robust about the U.S. healthcare system—the high technology components, for example—and at the same time learn that freedom and democracy are pretty good items too."

"As Colin Powell's right-hand man at the State Department, Larry Wilkerson seethed quietly during President Bush's first term. Yesterday, Colonel Wilkerson made up for lost time. He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy."

"Wilkerson won't say outright that he and Powell were deliberately snowed by intelligence reports tailored to fit a political push for war, but he has edged closer to that view, noting, "I've begun to wonder." It turns out that the administration relied on fabricators' claims about Hussein's illusory WMD programs and, in one case, an al Qaeda suspect whom the CIA turned over to alleged torturers in Egypt. "I kick myself in the ass," Wilkerson says. "How did we ever get to that place?""

"He is particularly appalled by U.S. treatment of enemy detainees, counting at least 100 deaths in custody during the course of the war on terrorism -- 27 of them ruled homicides. "Murder is torture," he says. "It's not torture lite.""

"I wouldn't characterize it the way Larry has, calling it a cabal...Now what Larry is suggesting in his comments is that very often maybe Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney would take decisions in to the president that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of occasions."

"Since 1998, Wilkerson has devoted himself to helping at-risk children at Macfarland in the name of Colin Powell, whom he refers to as "my boss" and "the general." Wilkerson works tirelessly to keep them in the club and to secure scholarships for them at private high schools. Yet these days he and Powell are estranged: This program represents the last remnant of a long, deep friendship between them. Like ex-spouses in an uneasy detente, "we decided we'd just communicate over the kids," says Wilkerson, sounding pained by the situation."

"He came to national prominence in October 2005 when — having left his post as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell earlier in the year — he laid bare some of the secrets of the Bush White House as he had experienced them. He had been inside the halls of power as the invasion and occupation of Iraq took shape. In Bush’s second term, on the outside, he found that he had had enough. The American people, he thought, had a right to know just how their government was really working, and so offered them this vision of the Bush administration in action: “[S]ome of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.” In the years since, Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, has not been reticent, especially when it came to “the militarization of America’s foreign policy” and the practice of extraordinary rendition (the kidnapping of terror suspects and their deliverance into the hands of regimes ready and willing to torture them)."

"The battalion commander ordered Wilkerson and his unit to engage in “recon by fire” — basically firing from their helicopters into brushy areas, tree lines, hootches (as Vietnamese peasant homes were known) or other structures, in an attempt to draw enemy fire and initiate contact. Knowing that, too many times, this led to innocent civilians being wounded or killed, Wilkerson told the ground commander that his troops would only fire on armed combatants. “To hell with your free fire zone,” he said. A “trigger-happy” Cobra pilot under his command then entered the verbal fray on the radio, siding with the battalion commander. With that, as Wilkerson described it that day, he maneuvered his own helicopter between the Cobra gunship and the free fire zone below. “You shoot, you’re gonna hit me,” he said over his radio. “And if you hit me, buddy, I’m gonna turn my guns up and shoot you.”"

"Can there be someone better to keynote and get the award than Colonel Wilkerson with his 31 years’ military service that goes back to the Vietnam War, spans the birth-to-burial of the “Powell Doctrine” (and its supposed lessons learned from the Vietnam tragedy), and contains his first-hand insights into the egregious errors made by the Bush Administration in launching and waging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Wilkerson has stood by his earlier description of Cheney and Rumsfeld as having formed a cabal to hijack the decision-making process: “I’m worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the process we’ve designed than I would a diktat from a dumb strongman... I’d prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators.”"

"What happened that day at the U.N.? Powell did not talk about it much, but his friend and confidant Lawrence Wilkerson did. In an interview around the height of the Iraq War, in 2006, Wilkerson, who had been Powell’s chief of staff, told me that Powell had been deeply suspicious of the George W. Bush Administration’s efforts to push the country into war... In the lead-up to the presentation in New York, Powell and Wilkerson huddled with the nation’s top two intelligence officials at the C.I.A. headquarters—the agency’s director, George Tenet, and John McLaughlin, his deputy—to review the evidence that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. The four men spent several days in Tenet’s office, with Wilkerson, a former platoon commander in Vietnam, sleeping on the office couch."

"Powell resigned from the Bush administration in 2004 and never really owned up to what he had done... He was unable to admit the truth that his chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson now acknowledges. “I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council,” Wilkerson has said."

"I sit here, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, an immigrant. My family fled the Soviet Union when I was three and a half years old. Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night. He stressed to us the importance of fully integrating into our adopted country. ...In spite of our challenging beginnings, my family worked to build its own American dream. I have a deep appreciation for American values and ideals and the power of freedom. I am a patriot, and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend OUR country, irrespective of party or politics."

"For over twenty years as an active duty United States military officer and diplomat, I have served this country in a nonpartisan manner, and have done so with the utmost respect and professionalism for both Republican and Democratic administrations."

"I am not the whistleblower who brought this issue to the CIA and the Committees’ attention. I do not know who the whistleblower is and I would not feel comfortable to speculate as to the identity of the whistleblower."

"I did convey certain concerns internally to National Security officials in accordance with my decades of experience and training, sense of duty, and obligation to operate within the chain of command. ...the command structure is extremely important to me. On many occasions I have been told I should express my views and share my concerns with my chain of command and proper authorities. ...any good military officer should and would do the same, thus providing his or her best advice to leadership."

"When I joined the White House’s National Security Council (“NSC”), I reported to Dr. Fiona Hill, who in turn reported to John Bolton, the National Security Advisor."

"[A] strong and independent Ukraine is critical to U.S. national security interests because Ukraine is a frontline state and a bulwark against Russian aggression."

"In spite of being under assault from Russia for more than five years, Ukraine has taken major steps towards integrating with the West. The U.S. government policy community’s view is that the election of President and the promise of reforms to eliminate corruption will lock in Ukraine’s Western-leaning trajectory, and allow Ukraine to realize its dream of a vibrant democracy and economic prosperity."

"On July 10, 2019, , the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council for Ukraine, visited Washington, D.C. for a meeting with National Security Advisor Bolton. Ambassadors Volker and Sondland also attended, along with Energy Secretary Rick Perry. The meeting proceeded well until the Ukrainians broached the subject of a meeting between the two presidents. The Ukrainians saw this meeting as critically important... Amb. Sondland started to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with the President, at which time Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short. Following this meeting, there was a scheduled debriefing during which Amb. Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma. I stated to Amb. Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security, and that such investigations were not something the NSC was going to get involved in or push. Dr. Hill then entered the room and asserted to Amb. Sondland that his statements were inappropriate. Following the debriefing meeting, I reported my concerns to the NSC’s lead counsel. Dr. Hill also reported the incident to the NSC’s lead counsel."

"On July 21, 2019, President Zelensky’s party won Parliamentary elections in a landslide victory. The NSC proposed that President Trump call President Zelensky to congratulate him. On July 25, 2019, the call occurred. I listened in on the call in the Situation Room with colleagues from the NSC and the office of the Vice President. ...I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security. Following the call, I again reported my concerns to NSC’s lead counsel."

"It is important to know that our countries' policy of supporting Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, promoting Ukrainian prosperity, strengthening a free and democratic Ukraine as a counter to Russian aggression has been a consistent, bipartisan foreign policy objective and strategy across various administrations, both Democratic and Republican, and that President Zelensky's election in April 2019 created an unprecedented opportunity to realize our strategic objectives."

"In the spring of 2019, I became aware of two disruptive actors... Ukraine's then-prosecutor , and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the President's personal attorney, promoting false narratives that undermined the United States' Ukraine policy. The NSC and its interagency partners, including the State Department, grew increasingly concerned about the impact that such information was having on our country's ability to achieve our national security objectives."

"On July 10, 2019, , then Ukraine's National Security Advisor, visited Washington, D.C., for a meeting with National Security Advisor Bolton. ...Ambassadors Volker and Sondland and Secretary Rick Perry also attended the meeting. I attended with Dr. Hill. ...Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short when Ambassador Sondland started to speak about the requirement that Ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with President Trump. Following this meeting, there was a short debriefing, during which Ambassador Sondland emphasized the importance of Ukraine delivering the investigations into the 2016 elections, the Bidens, and Burisma. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that this was inappropriate, and had nothing to do with national security. Dr. Hill also asserted these comments were improper. Following the meeting, Dr. Hill and I agreed to report the incident to NSC's lead counsel, Mr. ."

"On July 21st, 2019, President Zelensky won a parliamentary election in another landslide victory. The NSC proposed that President Trump call President Zelensky to congratulate him. On July 25th, 2019, the call occurred. I listened in on the call in the Situation Room with White House colleagues. I was concerned by the call. What I heard was inappropriate, and I reported my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg. It is improper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and a political opponent. I was also clear that if Ukraine pursued an investigation—it was also clear that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the 2016 elections, the Bidens and Burisma, it would be interpreted as a partisan play. This would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing bipartisan support, undermining U.S. national security, and advancing Russia's strategic objectives in the region."

"[W]hen I reported my concerns on July 10th relating to Ambassador Sondland, and then July 25th relating to the President, I did so out of a sense of duty. I privately reported my concerns in official channels to the proper authority in the chain of command. My intent was to raise these concerns because they had significant national security implications for our country. I never thought that I would be sitting here testifying in front of this committee and the American public about my actions. When I reported my concerns, my only thought was to act properly and to carry out my duty."

"Following each of my reports to Mr. Eisenberg, I immediately returned to work to advance the President's and our country's foreign policy objectives. I focused on what I have done throughout my military career, promoting America's national security interests."

"I want to... recognize the courage of my colleagues who have appeared and are scheduled to appear before this committee. ...[T]he character attacks on these distinguished and honorable public servants is reprehensible. It is natural to disagree and engage in spirited debate, and this has been the custom of our country since the time of our Founding Fathers, but we are better than personal attacks."

"The uniform I wear... is that of a United States Army... The members of our all-volunteer force are made up of... people from all ethnicities, regions, socioeconomic backgrounds, who come together under a common oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. We do not serve any political party; we serve the Nation."

"As a young man, I decided I wanted to spend my life serving this Nation that gave my family refuge from authoritarian oppression. For the last 20 years, it has been an honor to represent and protect this great country."

"When my father was 47 years old, he left behind his entire life and the only home he had ever known to start over in the United States so his three sons could have better and safer lives. His courageous decision inspired a deep sense of gratitude in my brothers and myself, and instilled in us a sense of duty and service. All three of us have served, or are currently serving in the military."

"[M]y simple act of appearing here today, just like the courage of my colleagues who have also truthfully testified before this committee, would not be tolerated in many places around the world. In Russia, my act of expressing concern to the chain of command in an official and private channel would have severe personal and professional repercussions, and offering public testimony involving the President would surely cost me my life. I am grateful to my father—for my father's brave act of hope 40 years ago and for the privilege of being an American citizen and public servant, where I can live free, free of fear for mine and my family's safety."

"Dad, I am sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected professionals. Talking to our elected professionals is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth."

"We are not a country where a group of lieutenant colonels can get together and dictate what the policy of the United States is..."

"Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who testified in the impeachment hearings, was sacked from his post on the National Security Council, in what presidential aides made very clear was revenge. For good measure, so was his twin brother, a lawyer at the NSC and a fellow Army officer. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was asked to resign, and when he refused, he was fired Friday night. , who had been tapped to be Pentagon comptroller but clashed with the White House over freezing military aid to Ukraine, will have her nomination withdrawn, according to the New York Post."

"He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave... He went and told his boss what he just heard."

"I obviously wasn't happy with the job he did... First of all he reported a false call... what was said on the call was totally appropriate."

"I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit. I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science – not politics or cronyism – has to lead the way."

"Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to improve our response now, based on science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged. There will be likely a resurgence of Covid-19 this fall that will be greatly compounded by the challenges of seasonal influenza. Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history."

"We need to be truthful with the American people. Americans deserve the truth. The truth must be based on science. We have the world's greatest scientists. Let us lead. Let us speak without fear of retribution. We must listen. Each of us can and must do our part now."

"I believe with proper leadership and collaboration across government, with the best science leading the way, we can devise a comprehensive strategy, we can devise a plan that includes all Americans and help them help us guide us through this pandemic. The window is closing to address this pandemic because we still do not have a standard centralized coordinated plan to take this nation through this response."

"There's no one company that can produce enough for our country or for the world. We need to have a strategy and plan in place now to make sure that we can not only fill that vaccine, make it, distribute it, administer it in a fair and equitable plan. We don't have that yet and it is a significant concern."

"Rep. Butterfield: How could we be struggling to get adequate supplies of simple supplies like swabs? What does this say about the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak? Bright: It says to me, sir, that there is no master coordinated plan on how to respond to this outbreak."

"Lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost. Not only that, we were forced to procure the supplies from other countries without the right quality standards, so even our doctors and nurses in the hospitals today are wearing N95-marked masks from other countries that are not providing the sufficient protection that a US-standard N95 mask would provide them."

"We need to unleash the voices of the scientists in our public health system in the United States so they can be heard and their guidances need to be listened to."

"Republican lawmakers on the panel for the most part were careful not to attack Bright directly. But Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., slammed Bright for continuing to collect his $285,000 salary while first on sick leave for a spike in blood pressure, and now on vacation as he tries to straighten out his work situation. “You’re too sick to go into work, but you’re well enough to come here while getting paid,” said Mullin. “I have a hard time understanding that.”"

"At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act (From Linicks's May 2016 report)"

"We want to make sure we get it right... We want it to be accurate and thorough. It’s a top priority for our office...There is evidence that it (unfilled vacancies) has affected staffing, for example, in consular operations. It has affected staffing in bureau of diplomatic security, which obviously affects our security if we have limited staff. It’s affected our IT staff...we have not recovered yet in our civil service staffing levels at this point.... (the hiring freeze’s impact on the existing workforce) does have an impact on morale around the world... Inexperienced staff, insufficient training, staffing gaps and frequent turnover contribute to the department’s other management and performance challenges."

"John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, says there are “serious questions” about the integrity of the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG is locked in an increasingly contentious fight with Clinton’s campaign on a host of issues, including her use of a private email account during her time as secretary of State... source within the OIG contacted The Hill claiming that the office has grown increasingly partisan, accusing it of having an “anti-Clinton” bias. Told by The Hill about the remarks, Podesta described the source as a “whistleblower” whose comments called into question the integrity of the OIG investigations. “This person’s account is highly troubling, and is cause to ask serious questions about the independence of this office,” Podesta said of the source. The Clinton campaign says it does not know the identity of the source. An OIG official strongly disputed the source’s account. “Partisan politics play no role in OIG’s work,” the spokesman said Monday. The source charges that State Inspector General Steve Linick is “excessively deferential” to Emilia DiSanto, the OIG deputy director and a former aide to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)... The source also charged that Linick is “more or less under her control, possibly out of a desire for a more prestigious appointed position.” ... The OIG spokesman noted that Linick, a two-time appointee of President Obama, was asked by Secretary of State John Kerry last year to investigate how the department handles records management, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and the archiving of emails."

"The State Department’s official watchdog is finalizing several investigations into the Trump administration’s alleged mistreatment of its workforce, its top auditor told lawmakers on Thursday. State’s inspector general is wrapping up an 18-month probe into alleged prohibited personnel practices by the department’s political appointees at two different offices. Department whistleblowers told lawmakers in early 2018 they were being assigned to tasks unrelated to their normal, substantive duties because of work they had conducted under the Obama administration. Investigators have opted to deliver two separate probes, one looking at potential misconduct at the Bureau of International Organizations and the other in the Office of the Secretary, Steve Linick, the IG, told the House Appropriations Committee. Linick opted to separate them so the could deliver the results of the international office investigation to State this week. He expected to complete the probe into the secretary’s office next month. Both reports will be made public after State has the opportunity to review and respond to them."

"Inspector General Steve Linick recommended that the department develop a “corrective action plan” to fix the leadership deficiencies in the bureau. He also recommended that the department consider other moves, including “disciplinary action” against (Kevin) Moley. The State Department has agreed on both counts. Linick has been investigating allegations that Trump appointees had targeted career staffers for political retaliation since spring 2018. His other cases include ones involving the alleged actions of aides to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. They include one case exposed by Politico in which a career staffer of Iranian descent was ousted from a top policy role. Linick’s investigation grew to cover the international organizations bureau after a June 2018 report in Foreign Policy about (Mari) Stull, whom career staffers accused of deeply hostile behavior, including compiling loyalty lists. The report issued on Thursday is based on thousands of emails and other documents, as well as investigators’ interviews with more than 40 people, including Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is not listed as having been interviewed. “Nearly every employee interviewed by OIG raised concerns about the leadership of IO and the treatment of staff,” the report states."

"Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, is set to hold an "urgent" briefing Wednesday with senior congressional staff members after Secretary Mike Pompeo Tuesday accused lawmakers of "intimidating and bullying" State Department officials by calling them for depositions related to the Ukraine inquiry... Although Linick serves at the pleasure of the President, there are safeguards to prevent him from being quickly removed... Linick, who was appointed to his post in September 2013 has a history of serving in oversight positions. At the State Department he oversaw the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. His May 2016 report on the probe was critical of Clinton, saying the former secretary failed to follow the rules or inform key department staff regarding her use of the private server."

"Linick previously served as inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency from 2010 until 2013. He was also an assistant US attorney in California and Virginia. Linick served as executive director of the Department of Justice's National Procurement Fraud Task Force as well as deputy chief of the fraud section in the DOJ Criminal Division from 2006 to 2010. During his tenure at the Department of Justice, he supervised and participated in white-collar criminal fraud cases involving, among other things, corruption and contract fraud against the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan," according to his State Department biography."

"Steve Linick, who was appointed to detect mismanagement at the state department, was fired on Friday. US Democrats have launched an investigation into President Donald Trump's firing of the state department's internal watchdog. Inspector General Steve Linick was investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for suspected abuse of office, reports say. But he was sacked late on Friday after Mr Trump said he no longer commanded his full confidence. The move prompted angry criticism from senior Democrats in Congress. They accused Mr Trump of retaliating against public servants who want to hold his administration to account. Mr Linick was the third official responsible for monitoring government misconduct to be dismissed in recent weeks."

"Let’s be clear: all of these moves are punishment for doing the jobs the law authorizes and requires IGs (inspectors general) to do... This will not end until Congress takes these retaliatory firings seriously. The appointment of a crony of the VP further politicizes jobs that by statute are supposed to be non-partisan. Another important norm defiled."

"This firing is the outrageous act of a president trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the secretary of state, from accountability... I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr Linick’s firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.”"

"The Trump administration has fired the state department’s inspector general who is reported to have been investigating the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for a potential abuse of office. The inspector general, Steve Linick, was given notice of his dismissal late on Friday night and is to be replaced by Stephen Akard, a close ally of the vice-president, Mike Pence... According to a Democratic congressional aide, just before his abrupt dismissal Linick had opened an investigation into allegations that Pompeo had been using a political appointee at the state department to run personal errands for him and his wife, Susan. Linick is the latest in a string of officials in watchdog roles fired by the president in recent months, turning on its head the tradition that such jobs are filled with non-partisan figures... In 2019 a state department whistleblower reportedly alleged that Pompeo had used his security detail to run chores like picking up food and picking up the family dog from the grooming salon. Under US law the president is required to give 30 days’ notice before firing an inspector general, to allow Congress to investigate the reasons for dismissal."

"The assault on the IG is late-stage corruption, and Trump’s kicking down one of the last bulwarks that stand between us and the burgeoning corruption-driven authoritarianism.... Cover it like you’re a foreign correspondent in a collapsing republic. Because you are. (to journalists)"

"Strength of the U.S. economy is the country's edge in human capital, the productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship of its workers. The United States remains the top destination for smart, skilled, and creative individuals even as the global competition for such workers intensifies. According to a 2010 ' study, almost a quarter of the world's adults looking to emigrate list the United States as their ideal destination. And once they arrive, these immigrants make an enormous contribution to innovation and growth in the American economy. A study found that American immigrants of Chinese and Indian descent accounted for 15% of U.S. domestic patents in 2004, up from just 2% in 1975. ' has estimated that a quarter of technology and engineering businesses started in the United States between 1995 and 2005 had a foreign-born founder. Immigration is thus a great source of America's economic strength."

"We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there"

"Some people say there are two policies in the executive branch … one is mine and the other is the president's, which is marginally so. Some of the things I've said are different from what the president has said, but all the things I have said have been approved by the president."

"Those who know me moderately well will say that I am an assertive, hard-nosed pragmatist. I guess that judgment comes from the fact that I have a firm belief that the world can turn out to be better than it otherwise would be depending upon what individuals, particularly those who have luck on their side, do about it. What is more, I believe Americans, to quite a disproportionate degree, have luck on their side. It is my view that belief is the underlying and basic element of policy and action. First one must sort out matters of belief: who one is, in what relationship to whom, and what general direction in the realm of values is up and what direction is down. Then clear and rigorous logic, based upon a cold and unemotional assessment of the objective evidence concerning the relevant facts, and a careful analysis of the probable outcomes and probable material and moral costs of alternative courses of action, can help to get one from where one is to where one wants, and should want, to be."

"Early in life, as a witness to the limitless tragedy of World War I, I felt grow in me a determination to act, to work with others to influence the course of history and not supinely to accept what, in the absence of will and action, might be the world's fate. I came to Washington in the summer of 1940 with Jim Forrestal. I have been here, with short exceptions, ever since. For almost five decades I have played some role in the affairs of state, working with others to bend what otherwise might have been called the "inevitable trends of history." Some of the outcomes were wholly satisfactory, some marginally successful, and some were failures-but, on the whole, they were better, I think, than would otherwise have come about. On balance, we were fortunate in the opportunities for significant action the fortune of history opened up for us. It cannot be the good fortune of all mankind to live in Athens under the leadership of a Pericles, in Florence under the Medici, in the United States under a Washington or a Lincoln. Nor is it the usual fate of mankind to live under a Cleon, a Nero, a Stalin or a Hitler and thus have an unambiguous case for withdrawal from government or opposition to it. The usual case is a mixed one in which the task of the man of general wisdom and with a taste for politics is to manage, to deal with, to nudge the existing situation toward the best that is within the realm of the politically possible, to find such scope as he can for his courage, his fortitude, and his willingness to view facts with an open mind. When given half a chance, the combination of courage and an open mind can do wonders."

"The problems and opportunities facing the present and coming generations are no less, perhaps greater, than those we faced. I hope that some of our experiences may provide insights useful to them. In any case I am grateful to have had the good luck to participate in the history of a fateful era."

"If there is little or no middle ground in the struggle for peace with justice, what resources of will and of national sacrifice are we entitled, or ethically called upon, to put into the effort to cause a system compatible with superior values to prevail? What risks are we entitled to take with the awful hazard of a nuclear war? What guidelines emerge from a comprehensive analysis of the full range of pertinent considerations? The concept of an ethical framework that has objective validity, over and beyond the values of the individual or societal groups and to which man can aspire to have some degree of understanding, seemed to me to be necessary for there to be a well-founded sense of direction to a foreign policy."

"Human will can be effective only at the margin of events. Freedom is not absolute either for individuals or for nations and much is determined by forces beyond their control, by events of the past, by accident, or by chance. At any given moment in time the margin of freedom left them may seem so small as to make it hardly worthwhile to exercise their will one way or the other. But the narrow margin of today becomes the foundation of the broader possibility for tomorrow. Over time the margin of freedom — the impact of will upon the possible — expands geometrically. The decision of today makes possible, or forecloses, ten decisions of tomorrow. The accumulated wisdom and experience of the past do not always give unambiguous precedents for decisions and actions at the relevant margin of freedom of the present. A new integration of general purpose with the concrete possibilities of the present may then become necessary. The most difficult issues of foreign policy and ethics arise when changes in degree, at some point, move so far as to become changes in kind, and dictate fundamental departures from past policy and direction."

"There have been, from time to time, changes in the degree of destructiveness of weapons and of war. These changes, until recent decades, generally have been considered not to have invalidated the precepts of Western civilization and its antecedent cultures of the moral obligation to defend its freedoms, diversity, and cultural growth from tyranny, reaction, and cultural stagnation or death. But with the advent of the nuclear age, we are faced with a change in degree that threatens to become one of kind. The destructive nature of nuclear war dictates that we no longer regard war as merely the continuation of policy by other means. The deterrence of nuclear war, until such time as technology provides a more reliable and stable method, must, for the United States, be based upon the capability to prevail if deterrence should fail. But this must be combined with an effort to join with other nations in the creation of a just international order."

"One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve. In the gulf crisis, it is crucial that we look beyond our anger at Saddam and remind ourselves of precisely what U.S. interests are in the crisis and what we seek to accomplish."

"Our main goal should be to establish a precedent for a new post-Cold War era, in which the community of nations, working through the United Nations and other organizations, can insure that would-be aggressors do not profit from invasion, coercion and force."

"In our view, all-out war promises the least success in achieving the objectives we have outlined. First, it would not necessarily discourage other potential aggressors. Defeating Saddam Hussein promptly in an all-out war would send an unequivocal signal that this aggression had not been tolerated. But if casualties were high, U.S. sentiment probably would be driven toward a more isolationist posture. Many Americans would be dismayed by the carnage and resentful that our allies were not paying a similar price. (The seeds of such resentment already exist.) They could be expected to oppose any comparable U.S. role in the future. The message would be that the United States had neither the inclination to work in concert with other nations nor the stomach to repeat the anti-Iraq action. Many of our current collaborators, who are ambivalent at best about the war option, might also lose interest in future cooperation with us. A world of growing brutality and chaos would become a likely prospect."

"For the past generation, Americans have regretted that in Vietnam, we let the passions of the moment and a lack of healthy skepticism toward presidential claims obscure a clear-headed assessment of our national interests. The result was that we were driven into a costly, divisive, and ultimately counterproductive expansion of a war that lacked adequate public support. Let's not spend the next generation wondering how we came to repeat that mistake."

"The fact is, I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them is costly and adds nothing to our security. I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us. What, for example, would our targets be? It is impossible to conceive of a target that could be hit without large-scale destruction of many innocent people. The technology of our conventional weapons is such that we can achieve accuracies of less than three feet from the expected point of impact. The modern equivalent of a stick of dynamite exploded within three feet of an object on or near the earth's surface is more than enough to destroy the target."

"In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal. To use it would merely guarantee the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of people, none of whom would have been responsible for the decision invoked in bringing about the weapons' use, not to mention incalculable damage to our natural environment."

"As for the so-called rogue states that are not inhibited in their actions by the consensus of world opinion, the United States would be wise to eliminate their nuclear capabilities with the preemptive use of our conventional weapons — when necessary, and when we have unambiguous indication of these countries' intent to use their nuclear capability for purposes of aggrandizement. The same principle should apply to any threat emanating from unstable states with nuclear arsenals. By simply having our intelligence services read their mail, we can tell if there is compelling reason to take preemptive action."

"Why would someone who spent so many years negotiating with the Soviet Union about the size of our nuclear arsenal now say we no longer need it? I know that the simplest and most direct answer to the problem of nuclear weapons has always been their complete elimination. My walk in the woods in 1982 with the Soviet arms negotiator Yuli Kvitsinsky at least addressed this possibility on a bilateral basis. Destruction of the arms did not prove feasible then, but there is no good reason why it should not be carried out now. … It is the presence of nuclear weapons that threatens our existence."

"From the beginning of the nuclear age, whether in government or out, Mr. Nitze urged successive American presidents to take measures against what he saw as the Soviet drive to overwhelm the United States through the force of arms. Yet he may be best remembered for his conciliatory role in efforts to achieve two major arms agreements with the Soviet Union. … A man of intimidating intellect, Mr. Nitze could be warm and affectionate or cerebral and brittle. He was a formidable bureaucrat with a brilliant mind and a persuasive pen. Out of government — as he was during the Carter administration — he was an equally effective critic, as he showed in the late 1970's as the mastermind of the opposition to the second strategic arms limitation agreement. He used complicated charts and computer printouts to warn that the treaty would lock the United States into permanent strategic inferiority. Despite this vigorous opposition, once Mr. Nitze was back in government, he urged President Reagan to comply with the terms of the treaty even though it was never ratified. … He always seemed too conservative for the liberal administrations and too liberal for the conservative ones."

"Truman’s second-term foreign policy was marked by increasing tension with the Soviets, the collapse of a US-supported government in China, and the outbreak of the Korean War. This was the time when the Cold War was militarized, both from a Soviet and American perspective. Truman’s administration struggled to put together a comprehensive and global strategy for fighting what everyone hoped would remain a shadow war with the Soviets. There was never much doubt in the president’s mind that the struggle was both against the Soviet Union and Communism globally. And he had little time for those among his own advisers—such as George Kennan—who warned against a global militarization of the conflict. Kennan was replaced as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in 1949, and his successor, the more hawkish Paul Nitze, put together a document that attempted to set out a US Cold War strategy. Later known as NSC-68, the paper was radical in its recommendations and would probably not have come to reflect the Administration’s policies if it had not been for the outbreak of the Korean War three months after it was first presented."

"The direction of NSC-68 focused on the need for dramatic increases in US defense spending and on American willingness to intervene globally. It encouraged economic and psychological warfare as well as covert operations to target the Soviet enemy and its allies. It wanted a dramatic increase in US intelligence-gathering capabilities and in money spent on internal security and civil defense. It was even foolhardy enough to suggest that tax increases and cuts in domestic programs would be necessary to pay for these expenses. The purpose was to put the United States on war footing in a conflict that could last for a very long time. Still, the most striking aspect of NSC-68 was not its practical suggestions but the view of the enemy that it represented. “The defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of the British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the Soviet Union in such a way that power increasingly gravitated to these two centers,” Nitze and his colleagues explained."

"I had not realized myself that it’s actually gotten worse. The Chinese treatment of the United States has gotten more unfair, if I can put it that way, than was the case three years ago when I wrote my book trying to sound the alarm."

"Until the Chinese are more cooperative with us in specific areas, maybe we’ve made a mistake in growing China into a great power when its hostility towards us is higher than we realized."

"There are times where you have to be on the journey and recognize that sometimes you don’t know what the end is going to be, right? Maybe it’s going to be great. And maybe it’s not"

"As much as wages are up and unemployment are down, we — unemployment is down — we also recognize there are longer-term issues we want to address, including inflation"

"The tragedy of the treadmill that's delayed!"

"What our role is and what we're going to continue to do is make the vaccine available, we're going to continue to work in partnership to fight misinformation, and we're going to continue to advocate and work in partnership with local officials and trusted voices to get the word out"

"Today, in preparation for travel to Europe, I took a PCR test this morning. That test came back positive, which means I will be adhering to CDC guidance and no longer be traveling on the President's trip to Europe."

"I am used to being doubted and being underestimated. And I find that to be a place to thrive"

"When I’m hiring, I’m always looking for people who have the best attitude and will happily make 400 copies and do it with a smile and ask to do more. Oftentimes that’s the differentiator between people"

"I will note I’m a human being. I’m an Irish person who, not to stereotype myself, but I have times where I get a little hot. I try not to, but there are days where I wish I would’ve been calmer, or more gracious, in my responses when you have a moment of human frustration. But I will tell you that how I try to approach it is trying to use it as a forum for providing information to the public. And trying to treat people, on my best days, with respect"

"The kinds of people you meet on political campaigns are some of the best human beings. They’re survivors, and they’re spunky, and they have personalities, and they spend months sleeping on couches and living on, whatever, pizza and coffee and bad beer"

"My armor has always been to do the homework and to be as prepared as you can possibly be. And to ask questions"

"I don't think our role is to place blame, but what we can do is provide accurate information to people who are not yet vaccinated about the risks they are incurring not only among on themselves, but also the people around them"

"The president and the vice president are devoted to ensuring that every American has access to health care, including reproductive health care, regardless of their income, zip code, race, health insurance status, or immigration status"

"If Roe were to fall, abortion would probably be illegal in about half the states in the country, up to 26 states, particularly in the South, the Midwest, and West, who have all spoken out — many leaders — about how they’re poised to restrict or ban access. Some have even taken action, even as recently as yesterday, as crazy as that sounds."

"The United States still has the ability to more than hold its own in that competition, so long as it doesn’t continue along the current trajectory of self-sabotage. But the fact that China has two plausible paths to preeminence means that the contest will be more complex, and potentially more challenging, than it was during America’s last great-power rivalry."

"I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe's energy security. 8:11 PM · Sep 27, 2022"

"[ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ] does have a responsibility to rein in the extremist settlers on the West Bank [who are] pouring fuel on the fire"

"We are actively working to ensure the safe return of every American being held hostage and every other person being held hostage by Hamas"

"Last Sunday... Sullivan made a claim that has drawn criticism from Republican lawmakers... [regarding] sanctions [on] the company in charge of the pipeline, Nord Stream 2 AG, and its chief executive officer... “We waived sanctions only on two, and they were not Russian. It was a German individual and a Swiss company,” Sullivan said... Sullivan’s assertion that Nord Stream 2 AG is “not Russian” is misleading. Though the company is indeed registered as a Swiss entity, it is wholly owned by Gazprom – an energy company that is majority-owned by the Russian government... a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told us that Sullivan is “absolutely correct” that Nord Stream 2 AG is a Swiss company “as a point of law.” But we still think Sullivan went too far, regardless of his intent, when he said with no additional explanation that the company is “not Russian” even though it is, in fact, controlled by Putin’s Kremlin"

"...As Long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia. It was at this unsettled moment that Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan. All options were to be on the table. But only one would emerge. In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion."

"What became clear to participants... is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of the President... in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”"

"President Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea"

"The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties."

"To make your own choices, but be thoughtful about them, not rash."

"As long as you had that grounding, as long as you had that place where you knew you could draw strength, where you knew you had a strong family to support you, everything was going to be OK."

"Diplomacy is about meeting the world with open eyes, attuned listening and small gestures of outreach. It was second nature to Hillary Clinton."

"So much of what happened to me professionally felt like I was floating in a cauldron, and so much about this book is about taking control"

"When I was a little girl, I believed that my life would somehow be different from the lives of everyone around me"

"I have never wavered from the belief that public service is a worthy profession, that the reward is worth the risk, that the stakes are too great to turn away from the calling."

"Take a chance. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. And don’t fall in love with Plan A."

"I don't think it's ever too late for this Court to give the statute its proper construction when you actually look at its text, context, and history."

"This court is going to hear from 27 advocates in this sitting of the oral argument calendar and two are women even though women today are 50 percent or more of law school graduates and I think it would be reasonable for a woman to look at that and wonder, is that a path that’s open to me, to be a Supreme Court advocate"

"Are private clients willing to hire women to argue their Supreme Court cases? When there’s that kind of gross disparity in representation, it can matter and it’s common sense"

"We’re competitive we like to win but we don’t compete against each other. It’s been the perfect culture to try to build a Supreme Court and appellate practice."

"Learn your cases and your clients inside and out so that you have the whole picture in mind when crafting arguments."

"There isn’t a trade off between being an aggressive and successful advocate for your clients’ positions and treating others with respect."

"This is not about reducing enforcement of the immigration laws, it's about prioritizing limited resources to say go after Person A instead of Person B"

"Federal courts should not be transformed into open forums for each and every policy dispute between the states and the national government"

"Federal government has to prioritize its efforts because it does not have the resources to pursue the 11 million undocumented "noncitizens" in the country."

"Make no mistake, it is impossible for DHS to comply with each and every ‘shall’ in the INA as truly a judicially enforceable duty, we wouldn’t have the resources or ability to go after those individuals who are threats to public safety, national security and border security"

"Applicant has never represented in any of his multiple legal filings in multiple courts that he in fact declassified any documents — much less supported such a representation with competent evidence"

"She's a spectacular lawyer with impeccable integrity and is ideal for this role in the Department."

"I am incredibly proud that the new solicitor general is a Boisean. Elizabeth Prelogar is distinctly qualified for the position, having served in the solicitor general’s office for years and already argued before the Supreme Court nine times"

"Prelogar’s confirmation is not only timely, but also important to people like me who recognize the need for more women to serve our country throughout each branch of government"

"Few nations elicit such fatalism among American policymakers and analysts as Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For some, the country is an irredeemable pariah state, responsive only to harsh punishment and containment. Others see a wronged and resurgent great power that deserves more accommodation. Perspectives vary by the day, the issue, and the political party. Across the board, however, resignation has set in about the state of U.S.-Russian relations, and Americans have lost confidence in their own ability to change the game. But today’s Russia is neither monolithic nor immutable."

"I would say it starts with showing up, which is what we’re doing today – coming to Africa, engaging here with our partners both in government and the NGO sector and in the business sector to talk about what more we can do together. But it is also, as I said at the – during the opening, about embedding our Africa strategy in our larger strategy to strengthen the democracies, strengthen our partnerships, strengthen our multilateral approach to common challenges, whether they are health challenges, economic challenges, or security challenges, and to do them together; and also, to encourage and support African-led efforts to solve African problems, again, whether they’re in the security realm or whether they’re working to integrate economies, build infrastructure, recover from COVID, all of those kinds of things. So that’s how – those are the – that’s the main difference. I think you will likely see President Biden invite African leaders to convene sometime in 2022. You’ll see a lot more travel. I am the appetizer – let’s put it that way – and hopefully folk who are even – who are more senior than I am, we are laying the table here."

"While our diplomats have returned from Kabul, as you know and we’ve officially suspended our presence there, our ongoing intensive diplomatic work with partners and allies in Afghanistan continues. First of all, as you know, it is this department and the Secretary’s top priority to continue to evacuate any American citizen who wishes to leave Afghanistan. We believe there are between 100 and 200 Americans who remain in Afghanistan who may have some interest in leaving, and the Secretary is leading our diplomatic efforts to ensure safe passage for them and for any Afghan partners and foreign nationals who still want to leave Afghanistan. And as the President said, there is no deadline on the effort to ensure safe passage for those who want it. Within this building, the Afghan task force continues to work 24/7 on evacuation efforts. And since August of – August 14th, the task force has been engaging American citizens in Afghanistan. They’ve made more than 55,000 phone calls, sent more than 33,000 emails, and this outreach continues today and will in the days and weeks ahead as long as there is a need."

"I think that's most important is that we are listening to the Ukrainians as this war changes. Russia, as you know, is now planning to mass its forces from the east and come in heavy that way, which changes what they need. They need our -- heavy artillery. They need long range rocket systems. They need anti-ship missiles of the kind that they were able to use on the Russian ship in the Black Sea, the Moskva, their flagship, just a couple of days ago. And that's what we and our allies are assembling and continuing to get into Ukraine as these Ukrainians fight so bravely for their freedom, but also for the principle of freedom and sovereignty for all of us.... What I would say is, as you -- as you made clear at the top of your story, the United States has provided more than $3 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine. Our allies have matched that. So, double that amount over the course of this year. We were also the first to warn that Russia would invade Ukraine, starting as far back as late October, November. I think even the Ukrainians couldn't imagine the horror of what is happening now. But I think it's a direct result, not only of their bravery and their courage and their skill on the battlefield, but the fact that we've been working with them and training them, as have other NATO allies, for some eight years that they are able to stand up to the onslaught of the Russian army."

"Because I had seen our best efforts to forestall a violent choice by Putin fail in ’14, I was more prepared than many... Everybody at the beginning was relatively skeptical — with the exception of the Canadians and the U.K., ...that he would actually take this step. The fact that we found the [Russian war] plans when we did — and they were as robust as they were... gave us the time that we needed to prepare. A lot of us were veterans of 2014, ’15 and ’16, and felt that if we had done more faster then to help Ukraine, we might have had a better result... The day of was this horrible, awful realization that he had not bluffed... We were preparing for many scenarios in which the Ukrainians essentially had to get Kyiv back...We didn’t know which scenario we were going to be looking at... There were many things we were expecting that actually didn’t happen... None of us expected the Ukrainians to be able to withstand as strongly as they did in those first four or five days... All of a sudden, we realized that Ukraine — and particularly the government, the leadership, the capital — might be able to resist... we began to become more optimistic that if we helped Ukraine as much as we possibly could, that the country might survive."

"It has been an enormous interagency effort, but it’s also taught a whole new generation of American diplomats what it takes to rally global support in defense of democracy, what it feels like to be part of an endeavor that is absolutely existential for the world that they are going to live in going forward."

"Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach."

"The latest Foreign Affairs(magazine) features a piece by former Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, “Pinning Down Putin: How a Confidant America Should Deal With Russia.” A protege of former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton, she is a notorious “liberal interventionist,”... perhaps best known for aiding the neofascist putsch in Ukraine in February 2014 that produced regime change, a revolt in Ukraine’s east, the Russian seizure of Crimea, and Hunter Biden getting offered a seat on the board of Ukraine’s largest gas company making $50,000 a month for three years.... Nuland’s notion of “robust defense” is really one of world domination. She has not concluded from the U.S. experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere that all U.S. military action produces is mass hatred of the oppressor and general failure. She praises in her article Trump’s decision to retain U.S. forces illegally in Syria to prevent the Syrians from using their own oil. She’s still not given up on Hillary’s cherished dream of regime change, a la Libya. You’d think with her record on intervention she’d be shunned by thinking people. But no, Nuland’s on MSNBC as we speak, treated deferentially. Is she running for a cabinet post? Nuland’s Republican husband declined to endorse Trump in 2016, labeling him a “fascist” (as has Albright) and voting for Hillary. They both perhaps see futures in a Biden administration."

"Most Americans have never heard of her, because the U.S. corporate media's foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden's pick for deputy secretary of state for political affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia. Nor do they know that from 2003 to 2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq, Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration. You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying "F--- the EU" during a February 2014 phone call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt."

"The "F--- the EU" call went viral, as an embarrassed State Department, never denying the call's authenticity, blamed the Russians for tapping the phone, much as the NSA has tapped the phones of European allies. Despite outrage from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, no one fired Nuland, but her potty mouth upstaged the more serious story: the U.S. plot to overthrow Ukraine's elected government — and America's responsibility for a civil war that has killed at least 13,000 people and left Ukraine the poorest country in Europe. In the process, Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan — co-founder of The Project for a New American Century — and their neocon cronies succeeded in sending U.S.-Russian relations into a dangerous downward spiral from which they have yet to recover."

"More recently, Victoria Nuland expressed satisfaction at the demise of the newest of the pipelines. Testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in late January she told Senator Ted Cruz, "Like you, I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.""

"This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin. The district court rejected respondent's claims, correctly recognizing that former Presidents are not above the law and are accountable for their violations of federal criminal law while in office. App., in- fra, 7a-38a, 46a-53a. Respondent's appeal of the ruling rejecting his immunity and related claims, however, suspends the trial of the charges against him, scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024. It is of imperative public importance that respondent's claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent's trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected. Respondent's claims are profoundly mistaken, as the district court held. But only this Court can definitively resolve them. The Court should grant a writ of certiorari before judgment to ensure that it can provide the expeditious resolution that this case warrants, just as it did in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 686-687 (1974)."

"Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida, and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged."

"The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk. Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice. And our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. Applying those laws. Collecting facts. That’s what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more. Nothing less. The prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the Department of Justice. They have investigated this case hewing to the highest ethical standards. And they will continue to do so as this case proceeds. It’s very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. To that end, my office will seek a speedy trial in this matter."

"Good evening. Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The indictment was issued by a grand jury of citizens here in the District of Columbia and sets forth the crimes charged in detail. I encourage everyone to read it in full."

"The attack on our nation's capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election. The men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6 are heroes. They're patriots, and they are the very best of us. They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people. They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States. Since the attack on our Capitol, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day. This case is brought consistent with that commitment, and our investigation of other individuals continues."

"In this case, my office will seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens. In the meantime, I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law."

"In 2020, then-President Donald J. Trump ran for reelection against Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Mr. Trump lost. As alleged in the original and superseding indictments, substantial evidence demonstrates that Mr. Trump then engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power. Although he did so primarily in his private capacity as a candidate, and with the assistance of multiple private co-conspirators, Mr. Trump also attempted to use the power and authority of the United States Government in furtherance of his scheme. As set forth in the original and superseding indictments, when it became clear that Mr.Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power."

"Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn't be allowed to practice Law."

"It’s like these mostly Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholics who worked construction, on the docks, and in the police and fire departments never existed, were never part of the scene. In modern San Francisco’s self-conception, there were the Native Americans who had the land stolen out from under them—then fast-forward to the hippies, the gays, the hipsters, the techies, and the oligarchs. American California isn’t merely gone; it never was."

"America has yet formally to transform (if it ever will) from republic to empire. Yet in all important respects, our country is no longer a republic, much less a democracy, but rather a kind of hybrid corporate-administrative oligarchy."

"Multi-ethnic polities are hardly unknown to history. Of these, Aristotle gives several examples—all of which ended up fighting civil wars along ethnic lines. The most common (one may say only) way that multi-ethnic societies have been successfully governed is centrally, from the top, by some form of one-man rule, whether monarchical, Caesarist, or tyrannical. This, ultimately, is how Rome “solved” the problem of admitting so many foreigners to citizenship, to say nothing of its far-flung conquest of peoples whom it never made citizens. In more recent times, one may think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Tito’s Yugoslavia. Consider, now, the contemporary United States of America. At first glance, it seems to belie Aristotle’s implied assertion that regime-ending ethnic conflict is unavoidable wherever more than one group lives under the same government. Americans pride themselves, and their country, on their exceptional track record of assimilating peoples from all over the world. Yet before we congratulate ourselves overmuch, let us reflect, first, on the fact that the United States has not merely abandoned but utterly repudiated the traditional understanding of assimilation, which is now denounced by all elite opinion as “racist” and evil. Not only does no American institution encourage (much less demand) assimilation, they all foment the opposite. Immigrants to America are exhorted to embrace their native cultures and taught that the country to which they’ve chosen to immigrate is the worst in world history, whose people and institutions are intent on harming them, and that their own cultures are infinitely superior. In this respect, one supposes, immigrants are encouraged to “assimilate”—to the anti-Americanism of the average Oberlin professor."

"The “Great Replacement” is happening, not just in America but throughout the West. Elites both deny and affirm it. When they write op-eds in The New York Times entitled “We Can Replace Them,” that’s a good thing and the phenomenon under discussion is absolutely right and just. When you notice and express the mildest wish not to be replaced, it’s a racist conspiracy theory that you are evil for even mentioning—your evil being further proof that you deserve to be replaced. They get to say it; you’re required not merely to pretend that you didn’t hear it but also to insist that they never said it. No majority stock in any nation has ever deliberately sought its own replacement, much less insisted that those who might have misgivings lie to themselves that it’s not happening."

"Tyrants or ruling classes that despoil their countries for personal gain are nothing new. If that were all we had today, our situation would be much more understandable. And we do, in part, have that. Our ruling class is rich and rapacious—rich because rapacious, and eager to be richer still by taking what little you have left. Yet elite enthusiasms extend well beyond mere greed. There is a malice in them atypical to the native despot, one found historically only or largely among the most punitive conquerors. A tyrant fears a healthy population, to be sure, because such is always a threat to his power. This fear typically inspires little beyond efforts to ensure that the population is dependent and unarmed—two aims of our overlords, it need hardly be added. Tyrants or ruling classes that despoil their countries for personal gain are nothing new. But our elites also go much further. They seem determined to make the American population fat, weak, ugly, lethargic, drug-addled, screen-addicted, and hyper-sexualized, the men effeminate and the women masculine. Those last two actually barely scratch the surface of the agenda, which includes turning males into “females” and vice versa—or into any one of a potentially infinite number of “genders.” (The number varies depending on which source you check; sixty-three is the highest I could find. Needless to say, no establishment source stops at “two.”) The regime promotes every imaginable historic form of degeneracy—and then invents new ones undreamt of by Caligula, the Borgias, or Catherine the Great."

"An odd feature of our time is the coupling of mass hyper-sexualization with mass barrenness. Some argue, plausibly, that the link is direct: hyper-sexualization disconnected from procreation inevitably leads to fewer babies. The degree to which crashing fertility is simply an effect of modernity versus a deliberate plan by our rulers is an open question. It is certainly true that every economically and technologically developed society, regardless of region, culture, race, or religion, suffers from cratering birthrates."

"The promotion of ugliness deserves special attention. The autocrats of old wanted to be known for their patronage of beauty, the arts, and great works. This is one meaning of Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” and also of Augustus’s boast that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble (to say nothing of having commissioned the Aeneid). A stroll through any city in Europe, and in most of the Americas, finds the same sentiment everywhere—until about the middle of the twentieth century, when suddenly everything turned brutalist, and brutally ugly, and not just the buildings, but the art, the literature, the music, almost everything."

"We will always insist, as a matter of statutory requirements and policy, on a variety of end use requirements."

"So, just before I kick off on those issues, I do want to start off by extending our thoughts to the victims of the horrible terrorist attack in Ankara, Turkey, this morning."

"It’s very difficult to look at these images and the human cost. It’s difficult, and I apologise."

"As the coronavirus crisis unfolds and media and Democratic bashing of President Donald Trump continues, a curious thing is happening – his numbers are going up."

"He did crap the bed today. The only question is whether he’s gonna roll around in it or get up and change the sheets."

"People might expect it to be funny and not just a constant political screed against one party"

"In individual terms, I found being a guerrilla behind enemy lines considerably better than being a platoon leader in Merrill’s Marauders ... where I was told to lead my men straight into dug-in machine guns. Your only hope was that one or two men would still be on their feet when they got close enough to the pillbox to throw a grenade. In such circumstances, an infantry platoon leader could do almost nothing to influence the situation. His brains and skill were essentially irrelevant. The only thing that counted was his luck."

"A guerrilla leader, on the other hand, could match his wits against the enemy’s. If he was careful about gathering intelligence, perceptive in analyzing it, and knowledgeable about the tactics and strategy of guerrilla operations, he could do a great deal of damage to the enemy and at the same time minimize the risk to his own men."

"A guerrilla leader can be successful only in very special circumstances. For us, the circumstances had not been perfect, but they had certainly been good. First and foremost is terrain. Guerrillas need cover to operate effectively—mountains, forest, or jungle. ... On mountain and jungle trails, guerrillas on foot are as mobile as a motorized enemy. It was the terrain that made it possible for us to find safety in constant movement, rarely spending two nights in the same place."