I am fully supportive of 'open service' and committed to LGBT military families.

The recent wave of Taliban attacks has made clear that the international community must not waiver in its support for a stable, secure and prosperous Afghanistan.

There has to be a reason and objective (to air strikes). What does it do to move the effort down the road for a political conversation?

I'm the first secretary of defense that's had to deal with sequestration. I've prepared two budgets that deal with sequestration. And you bring the chiefs together, the leadership of this enterprise together, to work through, how do we then take these cuts? Where do we apply those cuts? Readiness is the first thing that suffers.

Imposing democracy through force is a roll of the dice.

We live in a world where there are dangerous people, there are bad people.

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