I am very focused on our continuing vulnerability and the fact that we remain such a high target.

The United States Congress is a full and equal party in our government.

I personally think that it's not going to lead to General Miller.

the fiscal year 2004 budget for the DOE's Office of Electric Transmission and Distribution (OETD) has apparently been reduced by nearly 35 percent.

Mr. Secretary, when Senator Reed and I were in Afghanistan over Thanksgiving we learned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had not yet met its obligations or its commitment to provide additional troops for the provisional…

But Mr. Secretary, that was for a discretionary pool of $10 billion to be used as presumably you saw fit.

We are not about to give you a blank check of $10 billion to be used with no oversight.

Does the internal processes review also include looking at these individual cases that have come to the attention of the press?

I am also concerned about some very old problems, and the recent unclassified study by the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth...

I have long thought that we ought to be pushing much harder on alternative energy and clean energy.

Secretary Roche, if there is a plan to re-station airmen to the continental United States, will they be based at current Air Force bases or is it possible they may be shifted to the Air Force Reserve/Air National Guard?

I appreciate the specificity that you have presented here and we will certainly follow up on that.

What are the long-term costs of this transition and where are they reflected in budget estimates?

What impact will this have on current Corps of Engineers projects, clean-up efforts, civil works, and military construction initiatives?

Mr. Secretary, I am also impressed by the recently announced task force that you have compiled to work with the IAEA to locate, identify, and assess the risk of RDDs.

I am still bewildered by the delay that we have seen with respect to NATO deploying further assets in Afghanistan.

Can you explain in more detail, what are the problems, the obstacles, the resistance on the part of our NATO allies?

I cannot imagine any more important work than our efforts to understand how to detect weapons-grade materials, and to me this reduction seems short-sighted.