Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I am sorry about this. We have a hearing going on on cybersecurity.

Would you then agree that the consequences of getting these negotiations wrong... would be severe, both from the perspective of the Middle East and our allies, but also from the perspective of our own national security?

I have for some time been critical of the Obama administration's foreign policy, that it has lacked a steady mooring and a focus on the very real national security threats facing the country.

I think they give abundant evidence that they are not the kind of people you want to have having nuclear weapons.

To inflict a lasting defeat upon ISIL.

We cannot justify that to the taxpayers.

I hope beginning next year you will not come before this committee with a request to phase out the A-10 aircraft

We have in this legislation of the 2016 NDAA mandated a reduction of headquarters staff by 25 percent

We are not winning, and that is the opinion of outside military experts, literally every one of them I know.

I am not satisfied with our knowledge of this enemy.

General Dunford responded: Russia.

Thank you very much, Dr. Carter.

I really hope we have a conditions-based strategy and not a calendar-based strategy.

We have, at the expense of blood and treasure, achieved a lot in Afghanistan.

I think that is going to be the subject of some significant debate if we get into a discussion on authorization.

I hope in your capacity in this new role, as you dig into the plan, as you dig into the daily conditions, that we will make the right decision about how to keep the progress that we have gained in Afghanistan.

The morality of that alone, much less the unworkability of it, is in contradiction to everything the United States ever stood for or fought for.

This idiocy of cooperating with the Iranians and also taking 'ISIL first', of which Bashar Assad is the father, is nonsense and, as I say, immoral.