Washington is agonizingly slow at learning from its mistakes. Especially in the Middle East.

As I'm learning, Republicans seem to only care about deficits when a Democrat is in the White House.

The United States has the best intelligence-gathering operation in the world. We should provide a greater level of training and assistance to the E.U. to help them develop a more robust counter-terrorism platform.

From the outside, Qatar and U.A.E. likely look like twins - small, oil-rich Sunni monarchies that are largely friendly to the U.S. But their philosophies on the region are very different - Qatar does not fear Islamism as does the U.A.E.

When someone has cancer, the whole family and everyone who loves them does, too.

In global health, emergency vaccine stockpiles are like the insurance policy you never really wanted to take out: you resent the cost and have mixed feelings about never making a claim. Moreover, given that a stockpile is often a last resort, if you ever fall back on it, you have, in some way, already failed.

Children don't really understand the concept of health. You can't give them an apple and say 'if you eat this you will be healthy when you're older' because they don't understand. You have to find a different way to motivate them.

Thrashing about on stage is my exercise for the day!