Joe Donnelly

We've lost more young men and women to suicide than in combat last year.

How do we maintain a high level of readiness in the Guard as we go through decreasing budgets, decreasing deployments?

My feeling is, if they are struggling and they go seek help, that is a positive thing, as opposed to any type of black mark on their career.

In regards to Mr. Snowden's area, will there be a review through all of these contractor areas as to what is core to what we need to do and when we regard and review expense?

We have seen a huge influx of heroin into my home State, into other States, much of it coming up across the border.

One of the distressing things that happened in Iraq is so many of the real generals who were trained by you and many others were replaced by folks who, through connections or friendship or whatever, wound up in those posts.

I want to know your commitment to making sure that happens, that there's legislation that's going to be coming through in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), your implementation of it, and that there's a significant, in every…

You've been an inspiration to not only marines, but to our servicemembers all over the country, and to us as well.

I think you are going to see in this position that that is one of the things you will be spending an amazing amount of time on, trying to get that right.

I would recommend we get working on that right away, in light of what we have seen going forward these days.

the amount of resources you have to get the job done there, specifically aerial resources, because from all I have seen, there has been an incredible shortage of unmanned aerial vehicles and other products that are needed to find out…

I would like to see, if you could provide me, your list of priorities, because I've been very, very concerned that the way we've been using them, and with the way priorities were lined up, we're really skewed, which has caused us…

The sectarian violence in Iraq is very troubling.

How are we going to partner with industry? How are we going to work together with our intelligence officials and others to secure the integrity of the supply chain of what we have?

In the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), I am sure you will continue to tell them--we talk about how many troops will remain, but if we do not have a SOFA, it completely changes the whole discussion.

I introduced legislation earlier this year that ensures that this average becomes a minimum, not only for Active Duty, but for Guard and Reserve.

I think this is a critical issue. I hope you do.

In conclusion, I want to thank all of you again for stepping up to serve your country.

I trust that one of your primary efforts over there will be to continue to tell whoever will be their leader how critical this is and that basically everything else, all the other efforts kind of line up with this.

It is obviously of a critical nature that you continue to give us your unvarnished opinion as you see, going forward, where there might be glitches, where there might be problems, what the actual numbers need to be.

One part of the legislation is that we try to figure out what are the best practices of all of those, and that we hone in on those, as opposed to just running on 180 willy-nilly.

My fear is if they take a look back to our country and they can be people who can be extraordinary weapons against us.

The last thing we want to see is somebody who is struggling be hesitant to seek help, because they are worried about, 'Will people start to look at me sideways because of this?'

I would suggest that one of the first things you do is sit down and determine where did we go off the highway? How do we fix it? How do we square it away?

The numbers are alarming, and I think it is our number one focus with respect to preserving the force.