Mark Warner: “I think in general the Secretary of Defense is on the right track in the sense that when you stop to think, today's…”

“I think in general the Secretary of Defense is on the right track in the sense that when you stop to think, today's military is so different than it was 2 or 3 years or even a decade ago. The total force today is not only the uniformed men and women of the Armed Forces, they are very much part of the civilian force. There are thousands of civilians over in the Iraqi situation and in Afghanistan right now taking risks commensurate with those of uniformed personnel and performing services to give infrastructure to the military to do their missions. The Secretary of Defense has to have some flexibility in how he assigns and reassigns civilian personnel. I hope we could achieve some measure commensurate with what the wisdom of the Congress enabled the Secretary of Homeland Defense to have.”