I would suggest--and I hope you agree--that one of your missions is to continually assess the readiness and effectiveness of the ANSF.

if the government that is left in place is not broadly representative of the country, if we have learned anything in the last month, it is that that is a crucial element in the stability of the country that we leave behind.

I think it is important that the provision adopted by this committee not only would prohibit the buying of the remaining group, but immediately cut off spare parts which would, in effect, over a fairly short period of time, ground the entire fleet.

The Navy has no icebreaker capacity in the Arctic?

It strikes me that rather than an arbitrary date for leaving Afghanistan, it should be based upon conditions on the field.

I think the word you used is, it will be catastrophic if we cut off spare parts.

I think the key lesson is that, after all of the sacrifice and all the accomplishments over the past 13 years, what we need to do is ensure that the transition results in the Afghan forces being sustainable without our presence at some point in the future.

The inability for the Afghans to have the operational reach represented by the Mi-17 will seriously deteriorate their ability to take the fight to the enemy.

We tend to focus around here on problems. That's what we talk about. That's our job. But my sense is that Secretary Kerry and what happened last weekend was a big deal, and the avoidance of what could have been a disastrous situation.

I think it's so important for us to develop an effective relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This is one of the most important jobs in our country right now and we're taking a guy who really knows how to do it.

Unfortunately, we now seem to be moving into an era where there is at least a possibility of non-state actors acquiring nuclear weapons who would not necessarily be concerned about their destruction.

If you want to prevent an invasion, wouldn't the provision of lethal aid to the Ukrainian military be a way to help to deter that invasion rather than wait until the invasion occurs and then try to fight a rearguard action?

It's going to require troops; is that not correct?

The best opportunity that we have to preclude China's expansionist tendencies in Asia is force presence.

I can't resist, in closing, pointing out the irony of if we were called upon to come to the aid of one of our allies in that region against an expansionist China, given our terrible financial condition, we would end up borrowing the money from China in order to arm our allies to fight China.

There may be no one singular piece of equipment, but a general reinforcement and strengthening of their capability, whether it's with military hardware, whatever the panoply of weapons that they've looked for, wouldn't that make the Russians think twice?

I take it you're suggesting that the campaign in Syria may be also years.