Robert Gates: “it's a terrible way to budget. I mean, it is a gimmick.”

I think part of the problem is that at the end of the Cold War, we were affected by triumphalism or hubris, whatever you want to call it.

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.

We want everything that's possible, and a lot of things that aren't possible, in a new system.

The President does not like having countervailing opinions, he does not like being disagreed with.