John McCain

America's current economic challenges and the debilitating gridlock in Congress, have led many in Washington to call for retrenchment.

I was not so sure. Doing business with both companies has been difficult.

I hope that you'll understand from our side of the dais it's a greater and greater challenge for us to continue to support these weapons systems when we are having the cost overruns that we have.

I would argue that there are some of us that have a long record of being staunch defenders of national defense and spending what it takes and believe we live in a dangerous world.

These cost overruns, the American people make it hard for us to have credibility when we speak for a strong national defense.

Not to mention the effect of sequestration, obviously.

That's pretty remarkable.

The problem we have reforming Medicare is that for every dollar that Americans pay into the system, they are going to be getting about three dollars out in benefits.

The U.S. homeland is not going to be secure if violent extremists are bent on attacking us.

You know what's fascinating here, General, is that now you are saying, and so did the CJCS, that the situation has deteriorated so much that you now have questions whether we should supply weapons to the rebels or not, which then argues…

We seem to be living in some kind of parallel universe here.

That's quite remarkable commentary on the capability or the commitment of the United States of America.

I believe both witnesses--is it true that if this continues our ability to provide the necessary intelligence information for the decisionmakers will be jeopardized, thereby jeopardizing our national security?

All of this might have been avoided if we hadn't sat by and watched it happen.

A huge strategic loss to Iran.

I don't think it's appropriate to talk to Members of Congress about your views on a situation that's going on where some 80,000 people have been massacred?

I would remind you, I guess it was a year ago last March, you and Secretary Panetta said the fall of Bashar al Assad is inevitable.

I worry about not only what happens now but what happens in the future in a country that is clearly becoming more and more divided, more and more casualties, more and more destabilization of the neighboring nations.

It seems to me that since the President of the United States has made it clear that this is a red line, that would be just about the last act that he might perform in order to avert his overthrow.

If Assad fell and left the country, a pillar of the American policy for now well over 2 years, would we have to put troops on the ground to secure those chemical weapons caches?

Because they continue to get the flow of arms from Russia and from Iran.

I promise you, you can count on the cooperation and assistance and support of these two old geezers, so thank you.

I think this is a humanitarian issue that just simply is unacceptable to continue on the path that it is on.

Any or all of these actions would send the critical message to Assad that it is time for him to go.

This is an issue which has now taken on proportions which are becoming more and more a possible threat to stability in the entire region.