But we cannot leave. We did that once. We left the region after the Soviet withdrawal and we paid a major price for that.

the enemy is violent Islamist extremism, a political ideology that seeks to justify totalitarian governance by perverting religion.

But we cannot let these sanctuaries take hold and fester because they will be predator in nature on their neighbors and then eventually potentially dangerous to the American people.

I agree with Congresswoman Harman. This is a whole-of-Government approach, and it is largely nonkinetic.

But, you know, you can overlearn the lessons of the last war. One of them would be to just pull out because the consequences of that would be disastrous for our country and our people.

In Iraq, we can and should make clear to the government that we are willing to support Iraqis against al-Qaeda with U.S. air power.

I believe the goal is to have the bilateral security agreement signed not later than November 2013.

I will provide a copy of my e-mails pertaining to my work on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to the National Archives.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I agree with you. Again, as you said, hindsight is always clearer.

You have to talk to friends, neighbors, and people in their house of worship.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric perpetrated by the administration that the threat of al-Qaeda is diminishing and that its franchises are less dangerous is not the reality that the United States faces today.

the tyranny of political correctness has been extended so far that Major Hasan's actions have been labeled as 'workplace violence.'

I can tell you that I am convinced now, after responding to this incident that if we had not trained through the UASI process--they funded a joint terrorism training preparation, and something called Urban Shield.

We are in a war, and as I said, it is against an ideology that is not receding.

you can't fight an enemy you don't acknowledge

There is a danger if you think that the enemy is al-Qaeda, and you observe that bin Laden is killed, and central al-Qaeda is on the run, you may be lured into believing that the war is over.

We could try to engage more with moderate, sensible, mainstream members of the Muslim and Islamic community.

If we want to go where the problem seems to be most serious right now, this ideology of violent Islamist extremism among homegrown radicals.

I urge you to try to determine whether it was... whether lingering failures to share information... made it more difficult to prevent the Boston attack.

Ultimately, as we refine our post-9/11 counterterrorism policies, this type of failure to follow up must not continue.

It is absurd to say that there isn't a connection between these things.

I think you shouldn't feel any kind of guilt about going back and examining these situations where we fail with excruciating analysis, because that is the only way we will prevent these things in the future.

Shouldn't the fact that the first notice of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's possible radicalization came to us from a very uncommon source, Russian intelligence, have marked the case for special handling by our Government, and guaranteed that this…

If we don't do that, we are going to lose a lot of these hints.