You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket _ in this case, a woman _ more money in her pocket to expand a business, they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building, somebody has got to come and build the building.

And when the building expanded, it prevented (sic) additional opportunities for people to work. Tax cuts matter. I'm going to spend some time talking about it," the president said.

My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions. I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'

I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy.

I'm not quite through. And it's a long answer, I'm sorry. It's called filibustering.I think that was your question, wasn't it? The answer was so long I lost track.

Sacrifice

Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night. I mean, we've got a fantastic economy here in the United States, but yet, when you think about the psychology of the country, it is somewhat down because of this war.

Now, here in Washington when I say, "What do you mean by that?," they say, "Well, why don't you raise their taxes; that'll cause there to be a sacrifice." I strongly oppose that. If that's the kind of sacrifice people are talking about, I'm not for it because raising taxes will hurt this growing economy. And one thing we want during this war on terror is for people to feel like their life's moving on, that they're able to make a living and send their kids to college and put more money on the table. And you know, I am interested and open-minded to the suggestion, but this is going to be - this is like saying why don't you make sacrifices in the Cold War? I mean, Iraq is only a part of a larger ideological struggle. But it's a totally different kind of war, than ones we're used to.

Iraq

Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question. I don't quite view it as the broken egg; I view it as the cracked egg -- that - where we still have a chance to move beyond the broken egg. And I thought long and hard about the decision, Jim. Obviously it's a big decision for this theater in the war on terror, and you know, if I didn't believe we could keep the egg from fully cracking, I wouldn't ask 21,000 kids - additional kids to go into Iraq to reinforce those troops that are there.

16 January 2007

No question that the enemy has tried to spread sectarian violence. They use violence as a tool to do that.

March 22, 2006

I strongly believe what we're doing is the right thing. If I didn't believe it -- I'm going to repeat what I said before -- I'd pull the troops out, nor if I believed we could win, I would pull the troops out.

April 6, 2006

I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.

interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Sept. 24, 2006

…Nobody's accused me of having a real sophisticated vocabulary. I understand that. And maybe their – their words are more sophisticated than mine, but when you pull out before the job is done, that's cut and run as far as I'm concerned.

17 October 2006