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

No border that touches Israel is always secure.

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

I don't get into the book-telling business of conversations I have with the president. That's not my style, and I don't think that's a responsible thing to do.

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.

This current government in Iraq has never fulfilled the commitments it made to form a unity government with the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shia. We have worked hard with them within the confines of our ability to do that but we can't dictate to them.

[Sheehan] deserves some consideration, and I think that should have been done right from the beginning.