Robert Gates

Improving Afghan governance remains a major challenge to success.

The truth of the matter is the Iraqis want us out of the country as quickly as possible.

We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril.

Cybersecurity is a top-tier national security issue for the United States.

The Afghan Army is increasingly in the lead in planning and executing operations.

The Egyptian people have been denied their democratic rights for too long.

the reduction of forces and resources available from other Alliance members will not force the United States to make adjustments in order to meet its obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty.

Our concern, as I indicated yesterday, is principally in three areas: intelligence fusion, logistics and maintenance, and in air cover in providing the ability to protect their own air space.

I also would express the hope that the Senate will continue to reject the unnecessary extra engine for the F-35.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the President's budget request for fiscal year 2012.

I think credit needs to be given particularly to the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, because I think the Navy has a really aggressive program in terms of reducing energy use.

You can never reach a point--just as there is no such thing as perfect security, there is no such thing as eliminating risk.

You could spend $2 trillion, and you will never get to zero threat.

we will never make that mistake again.

A number of the Navy ships that were built during the Reagan years will basically reach the end of their planned life in the 2020s, and where the money comes from to replace those ships is going to be a challenge.

Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted or reversed, future U.S. political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the…

In many ways, the primary threat to the effectiveness and credibility of the American deterrent is one that we control ourselves, and that is failing to invest adequately in our Nation's nuclear weapon infrastructure, a point I have made a…

we must reject the traditional approach of applying across-the-board cuts, the simplest and most politically expedient approach both inside this building and outside of it. . . . It results in a hollowing-out of the force from a lack of…

the worst thing in the world would be what was done in the 1970s and 1990s . . . give everybody in the military a same percentage cut across the board. That's the way you hollow out the military. That's the way you don't have enough…

If you guys and everybody keeps the pressure on, we can hang onto everything we've gained over the last year to 18 months, we can expand the security bubble beyond that . . . We have succeeded in stopping the Taliban's momentum . . . but…

I think that once you have committed, that success of the mission should override everything else because the most costly thing of all would be to fail.

no higher priority in the Department of Defense, apart from the war itself, than taking care of our men and women in uniform who have been wounded, who have both visible and unseen wounds.

I think that the Egyptian military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion during this entire episode.

In a memo today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says all military branches will implement the repeal at the same time, hopefully by the end of this year, if not sooner.

We have to think frankly about the military in another country in the Middle East.