Kay Hagan

I appreciate your signing of the Army Family Covenant. I do think that's extremely important.

Thank you both, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, for your testimony today and for your dedication to our men and women in the military.

I have another host of questions concerning this, but I believe my time has run out, so I'd put those on the record.

I applaud your efforts in commissioning a thorough evaluation of DADT and how to implement a repeal of the policy.

I encourage the Army and the DOD at-large to adopt the recommendation of the Independent Review to increase service representation on Joint Terrorism Task Forces and coordination with the FBI.

We have to ensure that performance appraisals accurately provide a holistic overview of professional, ethical, and personal career development of all personnel.

Why did Major Hassan's colleagues and former supervisors wait until after the Fort Hood incident to speak about the content of his extremist religious views?

What did the Army's higher authorities do when complaints were sent up the chain?

It's a tragedy whenever something like this happens.

I applaud you for accepting this nomination.

How do you recruit these individuals?

I think that we do know that some of them are constrained by some of the mandates that their countries have put on them.

I want to thank you for your sacrifice and your extremely hard work that you do every day on behalf of all of us.

The will is there; the political capacity to deliver has been a challenge for some of them.

In order to do that, we have to address Pakistan's regional concerns, taking into account its relationships with Afghanistan and India.

There are concerns about budgets in each of these countries, and yet they continue to contribute.

That was my next question: What are you in CENTCOM doing to facilitate military-to-military confidence-building between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then I threw in India too?

Does an ethnically unbalanced ANSF pose linguistic and ethnic barriers within the local Afghan villages along this Pashtun tribal belt?

I know that the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade from Camp Lejeune is fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan, as well as Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne, and I wanted to echo the support that I have from North Carolina on behalf of all the…

Are you leaving? Are you going to abandon us again?

Recently, we passed legislation that was called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

In North Carolina, I have heard from people who think the EEOC is incorrectly perceived as an enemy, and they would like to think of the EEOC as more of a partner.

a U.S. Senator from the State of North Carolina

I think about Senator Enzi talking about when you were a small business owner and running things.

I think it is critical that we obviously begin addressing those as quickly as possible.