An America that inspires hope in its ideals must complement an America that inspires awe in its strength.

The most important thing to me is that the president Donald Trump fired the FBI director James Comey all because of the Russia investigation. That first justification given, again, the White House misleading the country about a major action the administration was taking, but the fact that they had a private conversation in which the president, by his own admission, was discussing the future of Director Comey in that job, and the president brings up whether he is under investigation, highly unethical, at a minimum, unethical.

We know that Russia was involved in hacking our democracy. We know that the evidence or information is sufficient to warrant an FBI investigation of this. We are trying to do as much of this as we can in the public eye transparently. Obviously, some of it will have to be done in closed session.

I'm concerned the clock is ticking, and the danger to the American people is still very present.

We must either reduce the number of our engagements or increase the number of our troops.

I'm just concerned that as long as this caliphate exists, it provides this magnet for radicalization, and we're likely to see more attacks like we have seen in San Bernardino, Chattanooga and elsewhere, and that's the concern I have over pace.

But it is equally incontrovertible that if our intelligence gathering process is seriously flawed, we had better find out and find out fast if we are to avoid another Sept. 11.