"It has been challenged. I mean, witness the drone strikes and some other things."
"Absolutely."
"I think this hearing is incredibly important as well. We are struggling with a very, very difficult national security and policy challenge."
"At the end of the day, it is simple to say that what we need to do is we need to win the ideological war."
"But how do we contain that? Which groups are the greatest threat?"
"We don't have the ability to walk in and say we are going to fix this because there just isn't U.S. credibility in those parts of the world."
"I want to emphasize though that although we agree that some degree of conditional military assistance is an appropriate way forward, the scale of leverage we can develop through assistance of the kind..."
"The purpose of the Overseas Contingency Operation from when it was first set up--the funds were to fund the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"Personally, I support the drawdown. I think the fewer troops we have there, the better, going forward for a variety of different reasons."
"Contained in one of those funds is an authorization for a Department of Defense [DOD] effort to support friendly rebels in Syria."
"I don't support sequestration. I would expand upon that to say I don't just oppose sequestration for the Department of Defense, but for all other discretionary spending, as well."
"Let me say right, if I could, your intent and your design are, I am sorry, irrelevant to this conversation."