You can't just drop the 82nd Airborne into Baghdad and it will all be over.

If we have to continue to live under sequestration, it will have a maximum impact on our ability to fulfill the president's strategic guidance. We can't do it all. It's as simple as that, with the limitations of the budget as severe as they are. These deep, abrupt cuts have forced us to make decisions that are not in the interest of America.

I would not trade America's position in the world - our ledger, our debts and assets - for any country in the world. There isn't a country in the world even close to America.

Politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound planning.

I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator.

We can't ... take that piece of reality in this business and set that aside and say, well, that doesn't count. And the Republicans on my side understand that the majority is in fact up for grabs next year. So there's not a decision made up here that doesn't have that factor coursing through that current.

Foreign policy is all about a universe of bad decisions, imperfect decisions; every situation is different. The dynamics, the atmospherics, the people, the pressures, the geopolitical realities shift.