Tony Blair Quotes

While the CDC is focusing on how our enemies could attack us, our military is focused on who may attack us.

The military has to think in terms of worst case scenarios. In a sense, they have to play the pessimist.

Well, you know, any defense force worth its salt has to be able to deal with uncertainty, has to be able to deal with events that we may not have planned for.

I am committed to ensure that our intelligence community, law enforcement, medical professionals, and military have the information and funding needed to protect the American people from threats at home and abroad.

But it is equally incontrovertible that if our intelligence gathering process is seriously flawed, we had better find out and find out fast if we are to avoid another Sept. 11.

We will have to continue to improve our human intelligence system-something that was, unfortunately, lacking in the years which led up to September 11. This is going to be a continuing process of change.

It is necessary secretly ---and urgently---to prepare for terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through the SNK or otherwise

The President has full responsibility, which cannot be shared, for military decisions in a world in which the difference between safety and cataclysm can be a matter of hours or even minutes.

Well, what every place needs is a security plan that protects it.

Responding to terrorism inevitably implies military consequences. This may shock some people, but these groups must also be dealt with on a military footing. I won't use the word 'combat' to avoid being painted as a crusader.

There's so many things, when you're in national security, that you do that aren't perfect, but you do them because you think you're doing what the country needs to be safe.

Developing a strategy, leading the world, funding it to make sure that we have a military that's second to none, and doing the job and making sure that we destroy ISIS there. That's how you keep America safe.

I feel very strongly that the significance of 9/11 cannot be underestimated. It forces us to think in new ways about strategy, about national security, about how we structure our forces and about how we use U.S. military power.

But perhaps the most important difference between conservatives and liberals can be found in the area of national security. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban.

We've got to strengthen our military long-term. We don't know what the world is going to throw at us down the road.

If you want to kick the tiger in his ass you'd better have a plan for dealing with his teeth

Now this brings me to my main topic - our military strength - more specifically, how to stay strong against threat from outside, without undermining the economic health that supports our security.

Once we got hit by - on 9/11 and lost 3,000 people that day, we recognized, and it was one of the key decisions President Bush made, that this is not a law enforcement problem, it is a strategic threat to the United States. It's a war. And based on that, we then adopted a whole set of policies that flowed out of that proposition.

I think one of the reasons I'm standing here instead of other people is that, frankly, I talked about it, we have to have a strong military.

There is nearly always uh, a process of wanting contingency plans made in the military.

Here's some news from Afghanistan. We're sending more troops to seal up the borders. Can we try that here? Three months, 12,000 pounds of bombs and billions and billions of dollars and the highest ranking enemy we've captured so far is an American.

They [China] have indicated that they’re trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have. So yes, we have to consider them a military threat.

We need a president who will lead with a stronger, more consistent foreign policy. We also need our commander in chief to put more faith in military leadership who have all of the combat experience. It’s bad policy to try to micromanage too much operationally and tactically from a desk in the Oval Office.

What if there's another terrorist attack? I cringe at the ideas of our enemies watching this, knowing much like the president we have now. You can do anything you want, you can jerk us around, you can harass our naval ships the way Iran is doing right now, and we're not going to do anything. We're not going to react.

In one of the decisive battles of World War I, disastrous reports poured into the headquarters of Marshal Foch, the commander of the Allied forces. The great general never lost heart. When things were at their worst, he drafted his famous order which is now in all textbooks of military strategy: "My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, my left is wavering. The situation is excellent. I shall attack!"