Robert Gates

Without proper and predictable funding, no amount of reform or clever reorganization will provide America with the military capable of accomplishing the missions assigned it.

Their ambitions are to have a dominant role at least in the Middle East to continue their pattern of terrorism directly and through Hezbollah and to enhance their position by the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

So there will be boots on the ground if there is to be any hope of success in the strategy.

The reality is they are not going to be able to be successful against ISIS strictly from the air or strictly depending on the Iraqi Forces or the Peshmerga or the Sunni tribes acting on their own.

They're not going to be able to be successful against the ISIS strictly from the air or strictly depending on the Iraqi forces or the Peshmerga or the Sunni tribes acting on their own.

By continuing to repeat that the U.S. will not put boots on the ground, the President, in effect, traps himself.

In the end, the Iraqi leadership did not try to get an agreement through their parliament that would have made possible a continued U.S. military presence after December 31. Maliki was just too fearful of the political consequences. Most…

Authorizing the enlistment of Dreamers will result in improved recruitment results and attendant gains in unit manning and military performance.

we've lost our ability to prioritize, to make hard decisions, to do tough analysis, to make trades.

I think there ought to be a firm deadline at 6 months. I think the Iranians are world-class experts in slow-rolling their negotiating partners or adversaries.

She only was against the surge because she was running against Obama in the primary.

He hasn't gotten a single national security decision right in the last four decades.

As I sat there I thought, the president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand Karzai, doesn't believe it his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his. For him it's all about getting out.

Secretary Gates told President Bush that Guantanamo was a national security liability and advised him to close it down.

Fundamentally reforming our export control system is necessary for national security.

There's absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.

Every senior leader when you are asked what keeps you awake at night, it is the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear.

The policymakers who will follow us . . . will not have the same historical, personal and, indeed, emotional ties to Europe, and may not consider the return on America's investment in Europe's defense worth the cost . . . and that will be…

An attack on Iran would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.

We're being eaten alive by health care.

To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.

There is no way to ignore efforts by rogue states such as North Korea and Iran to develop and deploy nuclear weapons or Russian or Chinese strategic modernization programs.

Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead.

At a certain point, it will become impossible to keep extending the life of our arsenal, especially in light of our testing moratorium.

With every adjustment, we move farther away from the original design that was successfully tested when the weapon was first fielded.