Leon Panetta

Our men and women are out there putting their lives on the line in order to defend our democracy.

I am willing to look at anything, anything that can help be able to serve these men and women when they come back from the battlefield.

Come up with the decisions that should be made, frankly, on the two-thirds of the budget that is still yet to be considered for deficit reduction.

I am hopeful we can have bipartisan agreement on that.

The Department agrees that it is essential for national defense that the United States maintains organic depot maintenance capabilities.

It would be irresponsible not to.

I am committed to adequately resourcing what we have in place.

As a former Member of the House for 16 years, I really do believe that Congress must be a full partner in our efforts to protect the country.

I am not sure about a military buildup at this point.

All bets are off because it would-- sequestration would demand such drastic across-the-board cuts that it is pretty clear that the force structure would be reduced drastically.

I want to close by cautioning strongly against further cuts to defense, and for that matter, to other discretionary accounts.

By volunteering to put their lives on the line for this country, they are entitled to the best training, equipment, and leadership our Nation can provide.

If we cripple that, we will cripple our national defense.

Make no mistake, we are succeeding. Ten years after 9/11, we have significantly rolled back Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda's militant allies.

Absolutely. We cannot break faith with those that have served and deployed time and time again and were promised the benefits of this retirement program.

Innovation is instrumental to the future of our joint force. We've expanded many of our--what we refer to in years past as low-density capabilities, and we've fielded many new technologies.

It's extremely important for the stability of this region that Egypt be able to develop a strong democracy for the future and meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people.

We certainly have gone after their leadership. I think we've dealt them a major blow by virtue of having taken down bin Laden and now al-Awlaki and other leadership types.

This is not a time to take the pressure off; this is a time to put the pressure on.

We had always had tremendous concern that after getting bin Laden that someone like Awlaki was a primary target because of his continuing efforts to plan attacks against the United States.

This individual was clearly a terrorist. And, yes, he was a citizen, if you're a terrorist, you're a terrorist. And that means that we have the ability to go after those who would threaten to attack the United States and kill Americans.

We had a responsibility to respond to that. What we have to do now is to make sure that places like Afghanistan and Pakistan don't become safe havens so that al Qaeda can again plan those kinds of attacks against the United States.

The ANSF are on track to reach the goal of completing transition by the end of 2014--as proposed by President Karzai and confirmed by our allies and partners at the November 2010 NATO Summit in Lisbon.

Achieving and sustaining success in each of the benchmarks requires continued congressional support for the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund.

This Congress has the responsibility, working with the administration, to get us on a track to ultimately reduce that.