67 quotes:
"That's something that weighs on my mind. Susan is totally supportive. I couldn't ask for a more supportive spouse. She's probably not as objective about her husband as she could be, but I'm glad that she's not. But she's said that whatever I decide to do, she wants to be supportive. The boys are only 9 and a half [years old]. They don't know what all is involved. I did sit down and talk with them a bit. I said, 'Boys, your dad's thinking about this; what do you think?' And they came back and said some of their friends thought that would be kind of neat, and that kind of thing. And I said, 'Well, that means your dad might not be able to be at some of your ball games quite so much, and I may be gone a lot, and I may not be able to be with you at night.' And then it didn't sound quite so good. I didn't want to turn them off to the idea. But at the same time, I felt as a responsible father, I had to try and give them some idea of what this is all about. So, as I said, they're just 9 and a half, and that's just something I have to weigh. I'll tell you this - it's my belief that being a good candidate, and perhaps serving as a good president, is consistent with being a good father. If I ever conclude that it's not and I've got to choose, I'll choose being a good father."
"Well, I hope not. Hopefully, we'll be able to make enough progress before then that we can begin bringing our troops home. But it's impossible to set a deadline right now. Hopefully, we'll make progress, but how quickly we will make it, no one can really say right now. I would imagine that we will have some presence in Iraq, but hopefully it will be substantially reduced, and be if not exclusively, largely in a supportive role, rather than taking the front-line role that we currently have. We need to get more Iraqis trained and equipped to provide for their own security, so that we will no longer have to. And we can do only those things that they're not capable of, for example air cover and those kinds of things. They'll be patrolling the neighborhoods, they'll be the ones out on the front lines. Hopefully, with the next [general] elections more than three years away, God willing, we'll have gotten there by then."
