Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Obama's capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles.

The senior director at the NSC for the Middle East is retired Col. Derek Harvey, an Arabic-speaking intelligence officer with a Ph.D. who served as the head of the U.S. military cell examining the insurgency in Iraq in 2003.

An intelligence officer and historian, Rayburn published a 2014 book, 'Iraq After America,' which is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Iraq descended into chaos in the years after the American troop withdrawal at the end of 2011.

The hard reality is that attacks by vehicles in public places are very hard to defend against in a free and open society. The best defense against such attacks is good intelligence, and that often comes from inside the Muslim community.

There are very good people in the Labour Party who I would like to see in leadership.

The sign of a great leader is knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know.

California is a very important state. As goes California, so goes the nation. We need to have strong leadership. Someone who can hit the ground running.

There is a great responsibility on the team to perform well, because our supporters and the whole of the country are expecting us to do just that.