John McCain

The Navy remains steadfast in its commitment to keeping aircraft carrier construction costs on the sustainable path laid out by former Secretary Gates in 2009.

The attached letter sent to Senator McCain, dated March 26, 2012, includes a detailed review and the steps we are taking to drive affordability into the remaining CVN-78 construction effort.

If confirmed, would you be committed to ensuring this committee receives an objective, independent assessment, free of any type of restriction imposed by DOD?

If the governance has failed then most experts, most commentators, suggest that in the end we will not be successful.

The American people are war-weary. Public opinion polls show that most Americans want out of Afghanistan.

I do too, militarily.

I sure would be interested in seeing those studies that bring it down to 231,000 or 236,000, General, because then they would contradict every study that's been done in the past.

I hope that the American people could hear those words exactly as you articulated them.

I think it is critically important to reach the strategic partnership.

The two remaining major obstacles to success in Afghanistan are corruption in the Karzai Government and continued sanctuary and support for the Taliban by Pakistan.

Thank you. I'd like to especially thank the administration for their efforts in this, but I would also like to thank my two colleagues, Senator Lieberman and Senator Graham, in their consistent efforts to get this done.

So does it surprise you when President Karzai starts looking at a situation where the United States leaves the neighborhood?

But it all fits into the scenario that concerns many of us, and that is that the news is dominated by how fast we can draw down and how much we will draw down and when we will draw down.

At a minimum, there should be a pause after September to assess the impact of the drawdown.

What happens in Afghanistan has a direct impact on our safety here at home.

Our troops have made significant military progress on the ground in Afghanistan.

To sustain this fragile process, it's critical that President Obama resist the short-sighted calls for additional troop reductions, which are a guarantee of failure.

Such an agreement would encourage our allies to make similar long-term commitments.

If we quit Afghanistan again, as we did in the 1990s, and abandon the millions of Afghans who have risked everything to be our allies, the consequences will be disastrous for us both.

Now is not the time to quit. It is the time to recommit ourselves to being successful.

We must reverse this dynamic, and the best way to do so is by concluding a strong strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan.

The strategic partnership agreement it seems to me is more important than just an agreement about detentions and about night raids.

Mr. President, the Armed Services Committee authorized, and the Congress will soon appropriate, some $290 million for research into post-traumatic stress disorder, prosthetics, blast injury, and psychological health.

Well, it puzzles the American people and this Member of the Senate that the most innovative, most technologically advanced Nation in the world has not made basically a single change.

The American people are very patient. The American people understand the need for airport security. But I can tell you, they do not understand why we cannot develop technology that eases their passage through security at an airport.