Military & Armed Forces
Page 6
- I was wondering what’s it like to die. I thought I was going to die, and I didn’t know whether it was going to hurt, whether it was going to be quick. That’s one thought that struck me…You become religious very quickly. Oh yes, made a lot of promises. That’s why I still believe in God.
- If you look at what the factors were going into the decision, of course there are competing interests and values. And one of our values is we bring everybody home off the battlefield the best we can. It doesn't matter how they ended up in a prisoner of war situation…It doesn’t matter. We bring our people home.
- I can't explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities. This is something I rarely encountered during 38 years in uniform. And so I will not defend it because it is indefensible. But I can take responsibility for it and I do.
- The interesting thing to me about me the release of the POW, Sergeant Bergdahl, is the Republicans immediately criticizing that. We saved an American and foreign policy gets criticized. We lose American lives on foreign soil, the president gets criticized. Are you seeing a theme here? It's politics.
- The presumption in that question is that…he was going to McDonald's for milkshakes every Friday night and we could have just picked him up in a taxicab. These people deliberately try to evade capture, and putting yourself in a position where you can properly ID and move against them takes a lot of planning. I don't think anybody's going to apologize for the effort over such a long period of time that eventually led to his capture.
- I don’t think people care that much, because China has changed so dramatically since June 4. The economy has been doing so well so people have been pursuing different objectives than being politically involved.
- There are a lot of politicians who said things about Bowe Bergdahl before he came home, and then…suddenly changed their mind…The best is the people who had tweeted their thoughts and prayers to Bowe Bergdahl. Then all this stuff happened, and they went back and deleted their prayers. You can’t delete a prayer.
- If you can't afford to take care of your veterans, then don't go to war.
- The ongoing war in Afghanistan is being imposed on us, and Afghans are being sacrificed in it for someone else's interests. We are not blocking the interests of the United States or other major powers. But we are demanding that if you consider Afghanistan the place from which to advance your interests, then you should also pay attention to Afghanistan’s interests.
- I don’t have time to think about a false controversy. In the midst of all of the swirl about things like talking points, the administration’s been working very, very hard across the globe to review our security of our embassies and our facilities. That’s what we ought to be focused on.
- There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don't have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them.
- We followed the law. We follow our policies, we self-report, we identify problems, we fix them. And I think we do a great job. And we do, I think, more to protect people’s civil liberties and privacy than they’ll ever know.