This administration is doing everything we can to end the stalemate in an efficient way. We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end.
As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists. These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.
Investment in the eradication of hunger today is a good business decision. If we fail to make this investment, it is doubtful that we can sustain healthy economic growth. Without this investment, our nation may disintegrate into a country sharply divided between those who have enough to eat and those who do not.
The parliamentary principle of vesting legislative power in the decision of the majority rejects the authority of the individual and puts a numerical quota of anonymous heads in its place. In doing so it contradicts the aristocratic principle, which is a fundamental law of nature.
The administration took care of a source of instability in Iraq. Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran. My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had. But he was a significant source of instability.
Toughest decision was early in my presidency when I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. As somebody who had run to end a large troop presence overseas.
Unless a person decides that `Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability - everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else`... This decision and this declaration - this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd - gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don`t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.
I have made a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.
My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world.
I said, going into Iraq, "We've got to take threats seriously before they full materialize." I saw a threat. I fully believe it was the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein, and I fully believe the world is better off without him.