You can overcome wrong technology. Your people have the initiative, they see the problem, no big deal ... you can't overcome bad culture. You've gotta change whoever is in charge.

The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event.

What concerned me was that [James Mattis] played not only a critical role as a battlefield commander in Fallujah, but also, afterwards, when he was promoted to various other higher-ranking positions, he served as a convening authority in court-martial proceedings against various marines who had been accused of atrocities - for example, in the Haditha massacre, where a group of marines went on a killing spree after one in their unit was killed.

The destruction that we have wreaked in the various theaters in which we've been engaged is really quite astonishing. But again, lethality, destruction, killing doesn't seem to achieve our objectives. So, my own sense is that a lack of lethality does not define the core problem.

Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot.

I find it disturbing that no member of the Senate Armed Services Committee is willing to acknowledge that record of failure and to ask our next secretary of defense what he proposes to do to amend that sorry record.

ISIS is a threat to all civilized nations. America's intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We're not going to allow them to do so. We're going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.