I wrote those poems for myself as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.

I suppose in a way this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters I've done wearing it. When the time comes it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American and a soldier?

Every soldier must know before he goes into battle how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole.

The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.

At a time when 2500 American soldiers have given their lives for the cause of bringing democracy to Iraq it is sad and frustrating to watch the Republican establishment disgrace the exercise of democracy in our own House of Representatives.

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest the soldier the poet. To know to kill to create.

9/11 was a deliberate carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us.

And across Afghanistan every single day Afghan soldiers Afghan police and ISAF troops are serving shoulder-to-shoulder in some very difficult situations. And our engagement with them our shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with them our conduct of operations with them every single day defines the real relationship.

If those in charge of our society - politicians corporate executives and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier a dangerous quality in the captain and a positive crime in the statesman.