John McCain

Secretary Gates, will they increase the number of civilian experts they send to Afghanistan to help with reconstruction and development?

Illicit drugs and terrorists should not determine the fate of Afghanistan.

My intention is to use this QDR to make difficult choices and immediately influence defense budgeting.

I am concerned that each Service may grow beyond their capacity to provide adequate support for the new military personnel and their families.

A program like FCS . . . must continue to demonstrate its value for the types of irregular challenges we will face as well as for full-spectrum warfare.

Secretary Gates, what is your understanding of the effect of unrequested earmarks on the Department's ability to maintain stable funding for meritoriously-selected programs?

Secretary Gates, president Obama's order also charges you with evaluating whether the conditions of detention at Guantanamo Bay comply with Common Article III of the Geneva Convention and reporting back within 30 days. Do you think changes…

Should some sort of rehabilitative program be established at Guantanamo Bay, similar to some of the programs recently implemented in Iraq?

What added measures are necessary--on the part of the Department, industry and Congress--to further accelerate the delivery of these vehicles to theater?

Another reform I'd like to see is establishing (and resourcing adequately) an Office of Independent Assessment to provide the Department and Congress independent assessments of cost, technological maturity, and performance.

Another reform I'm calling for is putting Nunn-McCurdy 'on steroids'.

I support efforts to increase the number of civilian officials and the overall non-military level of effort in Afghanistan.

I am very skeptical of what's going to happen down there.

Yes, I agree that business as usual is not an option, and that hard choices are needed.

I agree with Ambassador Crocker that the ISF have made enormous progress, and we expect that the elections will take place with a minimum of security incidents.

This is going to be a long slog.

At the request of the Government of Afghanistan, Allied Ministers directed ISAF to take action in concert with Afghans against narcotics facilities.

I believe that we need to develop a comprehensive civil-military plan for Afghanistan, akin to that used in Iraq.

We won't be able to achieve our goals in Afghanistan without addressing the drug problem?

Do you believe we can count on the Afghan central government to seriously address the drug problem during the upcoming election period?

Yet I believe there are non-military ways to blunt Iran's power to threaten its neighbors and sow instability throughout the Middle East.

The SOFA marks an important step forward in the orderly drawdown of the American presence.

The stability of Iraq remains crucial to the future of the Middle East.

I share the chairman's commitment to acquisition reform. Tough choices are going to have to be made quickly on the F-22, the C-17s, and others, but true acquisition reform is long overdue.

I am one who said Guantanamo Bay needed to be closed, but I think that we should have made the tough decisions along with it.