Leon Panetta

I do not think we should withdraw from leadership in the world. I think we have to be a world leader.

I think it may be necessary to send a bold signal to Russia that he has crossed the line.

I find it really difficult... that the President needs to speak to this issue to Putin and to the country about this possibility.

That message of strength will take us a long way toward making clear that Putin is going to pay a price for behaving the way he does.

When we are together, when we are working together, there is no country stronger than the United States of America.

Honoring our fallen heroes and their loved ones would mean taking action--taking action--creating consequences, to hold Putin and the Kremlin accountable, correct.

I am a strong believer in the importance of our NATO relationship.

We owe them every step necessary to help protect their lives.

The fundamental issue is, are you going to protect our forces? Are you going to protect our men and women in uniform?

We should at least make it clear that they should not be allowed in the G8 and that American financial institutions should not be lending money to the Russian State or its State-owned enterprises.

We ought to be looking at what additional military aid could we provide that would assist the Ukrainian forces.

I think what should be said to the administration, take the same approach that you are using against one adversary, Iran, and apply exactly the same kind of pressures with regards to Russia.

We are going to maintain our force strength in Germany and elsewhere as part of our NATO commitment.

The reality is that governors are struggling to deal with the situation in their states, that people are trying to deal with the situation in their communities -- I think the American people are trying to respond to the problems they are…

This President has essentially gone AWOL from the job of leadership that he should be providing a country in trouble.

He's not good at crisis, very frankly. He doesn't like to deal with things that he cannot solve easily or tweet easily about.

I would have thought that the president would've really spoken to the danger points that we're seeing now with regards to oil.

I thought it would have been far better, frankly, to not even have the president go out there because it created the impression that the president was not fully knowledgeable about what is happening with the virus.

The most important thing in these crises is to present the truth to the American people.

The problem is this president has had a hard time with the truth since he entered the presidency.

That was -- that was kind of not -- not a smart move by the vice president.

The purpose of those briefings is to build support with the Senate and with the Congress.

In my experience, that's unheard of. If you're going to go and brief the Senate with regards to a national security issue, your job is to present the truth to that group of senators and let them know exactly what has happened and the…

This President, and one of the things that's concerned me from the beginning of this administration, was not only rejecting the values of the presidency and how you behave, but failing to try and unify the country behind the president's…

I think it's very difficult to try to understand what is the overall strategy of this administration in the Middle East. It's very confused.