Quote For The Day

"What you're saying is I haven't taken a congressional delegation. I have not made an official trip. I've traveled through Europe extensively, and in fact, on my way back from Russia met with Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street... I think that you're seeing renewed vitality in Europe and it has a desire to flex its muscles a lot more in terms of foreign policy. But there's a big world out there. And I think that my familiarity with Asia and Africa, not just in an official capacity, but in a very intimate way, my knowledge of the Muslim world, is part of the experience that informed my judgment when I opposed the war in Iraq. It's part of why I've called for negotiations with Iran. When I first said this it was considered to be bucking the conventional wisdom. But now the intelligence estimates have said it's something we need to do. It's the same knowledge base that allowed me to insist that we shouldn't have put all our eggs in Musharraf when it came to Pakistan policy. All these things I think inform my foreign policy vision, one that says we can keep ourselves safe by maintaining the strongest military in the world, but also by reinvigorating our diplomacy and our efforts to affect public opinion around the world, and that's something I think I could do better than anybody." - Barack Obama.