I'm also renewing my call to President Obama to withhold any final action on this recommendation until we have that sort of information.

We need to get our questions answered. We deserve to have a full understanding of the Department's analysis and implications.

There are no decisions of this magnitude that are military decisions. Not in the United States.

I support, as a general principle, the DOD efforts to bring efficiencies into the process over there.

I would like to ask you a few questions here.

It's a water sovereignty issue on--other than on a bilateral basis.

We will continue to see if we can't help raise the awareness of this issue.

Well, with respect to funding, as you know, if a disability is service-connected, it will be funded.

the notion of the difficulty of upriver dams, which is a main purpose of this hearing, which affect riverflow downstream.

As I've said many times, the United States is a vital ingredient in maintaining regional balance.

So you are basically just taking the medical condition at the time and assigning a disability rating to it?

I would say that we have the tools to do that. It would require a large effort and measurement of many factors. And in the end, I think in the case of trying to retrospectively do this we would be left with an imperfect and uncertain…

In response to a question from Senator Webb with respect to the extent to which common risk factors for developing IHD may have attributed to the elevated risk observed in the studies reviewed by the IOM Update 2008...

If the American people lose faith in the integrity of our disability benefits system, veterans and their families will be the ones that will suffer.

We sometimes have an uncomfortable duty to ask the hard questions.

There is nothing wrong with trying to make laws better.

We must maintain the integrity of our compensation system, even given these unknowns.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe Mr. Samet, did you have a follow-on to that? You had your hand up.