Tony Mendez, Moscow Rule #7:

Lull them into a sense of complacency.

Martin Chulov:

For ISIS, the relatively quiet years between 2008 and 2011 represented a lull, not a defeat.

Amy Davidson, on Dick Cheney and John Brennan:

Neither man would call what the CIA did torture. Each, in his own way, suggested that American torturers have not faced a reckoning so much as a lull in their business.

Dick Cheney:

I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective ...

One of Colin Powell's Rules:

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Graeme Wood:

"Is the boy a Talib?" I asked. "Future Talib," he said.

Abu Ahmed:

I underestimated Baghdadi. And America underestimated the role it played in making him what he is.

There are others who are not ideologues. People who started out in Bucca, like me. And then it got bigger than any of us. This can't be stopped now. This is out of the control of any man. Not Baghdadi, or anyone else in his circle.

Peter Beinart:

The wisest thinkers have reconciled the national desire to feel special with the knowledge that Americans are just as fallen as everyone else.