Leon Panetta Quotes
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China is a major power in the Pacific and I think we are dealing with some common threats in that region: the whole issue of Korea and the stability of Korea, the whole issue of nuclear proliferation, the whole issue of providing free access to our ships that are operating in that area.
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I think the primary message to the world is that the United States is going to remain the strongest military power in the world.
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Iran's continued drive to develop nuclear capabilities, including troubling enrichment activities and past work on weaponization documented by the IAEA, and its continued support to groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations make clear that the regime in Tehran is a very grave threat to all of us.
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I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened.
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The fundamental premise is that neither the United States or the international community is going to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.
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Today, I think the attitude is that governing is not necessarily good politics, and the result is that it's much more partisan and much more divided.
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The Taliban is resilient.
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Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.
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I know that young people sometimes, caught up in the moment, make some very foolish decisions.
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After every major conflict - World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union - what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force, largely by doing deep across-the-board cuts.
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Well, the United States is a Pacific power. And we have always had a presence in the Pacific.
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I don't engage in hypotheticals.
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Frankly, my fundamental beliefs have not changed.
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One demonstration of extremists, any more than a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the United States, is not necessarily reflective of what the rest of the country feels.
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I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt.
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The United States, and the president's made this clear, does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us. And it's a red line obviously for the Israelis so we share a common goal here.
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I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened. We have not seen them able to conduct any kind of organized attack to regain any territory that they've lost. We've seen levels of violence going down.
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If the Iraqis fail to implement the reforms, if they fail to get a handle on the violence, there's nothing the United States can do, militarily or otherwise, that can solve those problems. They have to assume the primary responsibility to govern themselves.
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The United States has to have the capability to deal with more than one enemy at one time and be able to confront them and win.
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The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security.
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You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on.
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Rather than undermining the Palestinian Authority, it is in Israel's interests to strengthen it by... continuing to transfer Palestinian tax revenues and pursuing other avenues of cooperation.
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I think soon after I became director of the CIA - President Obama pulled me into the Oval Office and said: 'Look, I just want you to know that your top priority is to go after Osama bin Laden.'
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When you cut a half-a-trillion dollars from the defense budget, it affects almost every area in the defense budget.