Robert Gates: “the fact remains, the United States turned its back on Afghanistan.”

Allies are a huge asset and in not understanding that I think is a real problem.

we always discover . . . that we [go] too far in cutting

I soon learned that the only way I could get significant new or additional equipment to commanders in the field in weeks or months, not years, was to take control of the problem myself through special task forces and ad hoc processes.

Such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.