The United States still has such a leadership role to play in the world.

the training that our special forces do with other nations' special forces has to be a drop in the bucket.

If nothing is done to eliminate sequestration in fiscal year 2016 and beyond, the Department could still see up to 80 percent of the original BCA sequestration level reductions.

We really need to see what the delta is between an optimum and full sequester.

Thank you, Senator Shaheen and members of the committee, and thank you all for your service and willingness to continue service in these important positions.

The spending levels proposed under the President's budget plan would also enable the Navy to maintain 11 carrier strike groups.

These across-the-board cuts have had significant negative implications for readiness, operational capacity, and our military personnel and their families.

My read of the speech is that a lot of the speech is about the continuing effect that full sequester cuts would have on the military budget.

Kazakhstan has been a very strong partner of the United States in all the work that we have done in Afghanistan.

I'll look forward to seeing how the presidential budget supports this statutory policy of the 11-carrier Navy.

The absence of a cyber-bill makes this all harder for all of us.

General Allen said--and this was kind of a surprising bit of testimony, he was one of our witnesses--that he viewed corruption as more of an existential threat to the future of Afghanistan than terrorism.

the primary job of Congress is to give some definition at the front end in terms of what the mission is.

Do any of you disagree that a debate and a congressional vote about the war against ISIL would educate the American public about the threat that ISIL poses to the Nation and our allies?

I look forward to it.

I assert that there would be some wisdom in Congress debating and coming up with an authorization for the war against ISIL based upon the magnitude of the operation, the expected operations.

If we believe that cyber activity is taking us down the path to armed conflict, then international law would apply.

I remember when I was in Israel in April 2009 as Governor of Virginia. There was a U.N.--I believe it was UNESCO--meeting in Geneva that one of the invited keynote speakers was Ahmedinejad, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran, and to have a…

the drug trade in these nations is really a drug trade where they are being used as a transit point for drugs

American foreign policy almost always has revolved around an east-west axis.

We have a very strong partnership--I am glad to hear you talk about that in some detail--with Algeria.

Talk a little bit about the security challenge for your personnel in Yemen.

I think the answer just suggests itself that there is a better way to spend the money.

I think my private sector background of working both with entrepreneurs as well as with the broad overall international business, I would hope to help Costa Rica address some of the issues that might be limiting additional investment from…

Hondurans are not big drug users. The drugs that are transiting through Honduras are not transiting through Honduras because of the Honduran mass appetite for illegal substances.