JOHN ABIZAID

We'll try to include Iraqi officers in our staffs. We will do everything we can to empower Iraqi security forces to stand up on their own and operate where they can alone.

The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth and it just can't walk away from the Middle East and central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

Being on the run, having to change the way that you do business, being unable to plan in a safe and secure environment, always looking over your shoulder, knowing that some day somebody's going to knock on your door and it's going to be your last.

We've got to ensure that the quality and the capability of these forces will be good enough to withstand the challenges that the insurgents and the terrorists will present to the new Iraqi government.

Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time.

I think you will see a lot of strains develop in the political process that will result in violence everywhere in the country - but it's controllable, it's workable and it will lead to a much better future for these people.

And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly.

We need to make it very clear to the Iranians, the same way we made it clear to the Soviet Union and China, that their first use of nuclear weapons would result in the devastation of their nation.

Clearly the Secretary of Defense, my boss, would like nothing better than to get Osama bin Laden and to get... to ensure the complete defeat of al-Qaida, because we know that al-Qaida is planning operations against the United States even as we speak here.

But I am satisfied that the information that we have that this is the work of Zarqawi, is accurate.

I don't believe Iran is a suicide state.

Our forces will not be on the sidelines.

In other words, for every 10 enemy you kill you bring on 20 new recruits to their anti-coalition cause then essentially you are working against yourself.

You don't build a new power plant in the United States overnight. It takes years to build.

But the truth of the matter is that there is there is an opportunity for them to participate in the economic and political future of the country and certainly in the security life of the country.

Morale is good; troops are confident; leaders are capable.

I think what actually works best is local-level individual targeting of key leadership nodes.

But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity.

But all that having been said, you can't, in a city of a million people like Karbala, or 5 million like Baghdad, you can't be in all places at all times.

The power to prevent violence is a power that no police force seems to have anywhere in the United States.

As far as Zarqawi is concerned, there is a network of extremists; it's not just Zarqawi.

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there'll be additional violence.

Undoubtedly, there are members of the former regime that are cooperating in some fashion and then there are extremists that are within Iraq that are cooperating with them.

Well, the reports are correct that we're conducting very robust military operations on the Afghan side of the border in areas where we think al-Qaida is operating and Taliban remnants are.

Capturing any member of any terrorist cell or any insurgent cell that we may happen to come across is always very, very valuable, and the thing that interests me is that in most instances after a time, people talk and they tell us what they know.