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.

With respect to the outlines of what's in the Army Field Manual, there's no doubt in my mind about the limitations it places not only on the DOD, but on the Central Intelligence Agency. And I'll always comply with the law.

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.

The United States has been essentially engaged in an ongoing war that most people date from 2001. That war has taken us to Afghanistan, to Iraq, in a lesser way to other countries - Libya, Somalia, Yemen.

What would you do differently as defense secretary to compensate for this record in which the greatest military in the world, as we are constantly told, doesn't get the job done?

We can kill lots of people. We do kill lots of people. We can destroy virtually anything we choose to destroy.

We face now an era where we're going to be fighting the terrorist threat. I mean, that's simply a reality we are going to have to address that one.