Chuck Hagel
24th and current United States Secretary of Defense, serving since 2013.
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If he'd been in the military, he would have learned gun safety.
This is a ping-pong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad, are not beans. They're real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder.
I believe, and always have, that America must engage — not retreat — in the world.
If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. This is a tough business.
We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam.
We are the adult power in the world. It is because of the United States, our action or inaction, that there will be a resolution here.
We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed.
I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president.
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