Robert Gates: “I support the President's decision to work with Congress this year to repeal 10 U.S.C. Sec. 654.”

it's a terrible way to budget. I mean, it is a gimmick.

My concern is, we don't have an overriding strategy on the part of the United States in this complex challenge over the next 20 to 30 years.

I soon learned that the only way I could get significant new or additional equipment to commanders in the field in weeks or months, not years, was to take control of the problem myself through special task forces and ad hoc processes.

Putin feels that he has a destiny to recreate the Russian Empire.