For my first wedding I cried all the way down the aisle. My fake eyelash came off. My nose was red. My eyes were swollen. I'm not one of those pretty criers.

I'm one of those people who has always been a bridesmaid.

All weddings except those with shotguns in evidence are wonderful.

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to quote 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

From our perspective trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror if you will the war on terror that we're engaged in this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there.

There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.

There is no morality in war. Morality is the privilege of those judging from the distance. War is only death and destruction.

You might hold an ethical position that it's wrong to lie but if you have plans for a war in Iraq and you want to keep them secret for practical reasons - to reduce casualties perhaps - and someone asks you about those plans you may need to lie for a 'good' outcome.

As you may recall Truman was extremely unpopular when he finally left Washington in 1953 thanks largely to the Korean War. Today however he is thought to have been a solidly good president a 'Near Great' even in the terminology of those surveys of historians they do every now and then.

Bad things do happen in the world like war natural disasters disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.