Robert Gates: “we always discover . . . that we [go] too far in cutting”

This is basically the responsibility of the president to educate people about why this is necessary.

Allies are a huge asset and in not understanding that I think is a real problem.

There has to be an agreement between the president and the Congress on actually what has to be done to recapture our industrial-military industrial capabilities.

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.