“The next day President-elect Bush came to the White House for the same meeting I had had with his father eight years earlier. We talked about the campaign, White House operations, and national security. He was putting together an experienced team from past Republican administrations who believed that the biggest security issues were the need for national missle defense and Iraq. I told him that based on the last eight years, I thought his biggest security problems, in order, would be Osama bin Laden and al Queda; the absence of peace in the Middle East; the standoff between nuclear powers India and Pakistan;, and the ties of the Pakistanis to the Taliban and al Queda; North Korea; and then Iraq. I said that my biggest disappointment was not getting bin Laden, that we still might achieve an agreement in the Middle East, and that we had almost tied up a deal with North Korea to end its missle program, but that he probably would have to go there to close the deal.
He listened to what I has to say without much comment, then changed the subject to how I did the job. My only advice was that he should put together a good team and try to do what he thought was right for the country. Then we talked a little more politics.”
Maybe Bush should have listened a little better.