Lawrence Korb Quotations

If Kuwait grew carrots we wouldn't give a damn.

There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.

This is still a man's profession, with a lot of men who intellectually and emotionally have not accepted that the military could be women's work.

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.

With Guard and Reserve units, you can end up with a lot of people from one part of the country dying in one day, and that gets people's attention.

I think he has now bought himself some time to withdraw slowly. But that assumes everything goes as planned next year.

Who is out there that is more ready than we are? What military in the world are we not ready to take on? I think it's dangerous to convey to the rest of the world who looks to us to provide leadership that we have more problems than we are letting on.

The real issue here is that you have a policy that is costing us money, hurting readiness and is really not fulfilling any national security objective.

What Katrina exposed, the questions over renditions and torture of terror suspects, and now the domestic spying controversy - all of this has really hit our image hard around the world.

No secretary of defense who has ever stayed more than one term has ever turned out well. McNamara and Weinberger, both if they had left at the end of their first term would have gone down in history much differently.

But on balance I'd say we had a net loss. Unfortunately, these other issues dominated that expose the US to charges of hypocrisy.

A timetable would provide an incentive. As long as we're there, there's no incentive for (Iraqis) to get their act together.

This British guy makes a lot of good points.

It says something about what the professional military is thinking. It's like they're saying, 'I thought these guys knew what they were doing.

What it's going to mean is some short-term gains, but a long-term disaster. You're going to have less research and development as you get down to probably four major companies.

They haven't made the hard choices. You can't fund all of these weapons systems.

And here's Rumsfeld. Among other things, he just stayed too long.

It costs us $1 million for every troop[soldier] in Afghanistan.

The highest levels of the U.S. military, the Defense Department, and the White House must be held accountable for putting our troops at greater risk and diminishing Americas moral authority across the globe.