The fundamental premise is that neither the United States or the international community is going to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

The last thing I want to do is to make the mistakes of the past.

The Taliban is resilient.

The United States has to have the capability to deal with more than one enemy at one time and be able to confront them and win.

The United States is going to defend itself under any circumstances.

The United States was attacked on 9/11/12, and we know who attacked us.

The United States will do whatever we have to do to protect our forces.

There's no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan.

These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline.

Throughout the 40 years I've been in Washington, I've always worked hard, particularly with regards to the budget issues.

Unfortunately these days, there is a hell of a lot that keeps me awake.

Well, the United States is a Pacific power. And we have always had a presence in the Pacific.

When you cut a half-a-trillion dollars from the defense budget, it affects almost every area in the defense budget.

When you're smaller and leaner, you're not going to have that large a presence throughout the world.

You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on.

You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.

China is a major power in the Pacific and I think we are dealing with some common threats in that region: the whole issue of Korea and the stability of Korea, the whole issue of nuclear proliferation, the whole issue of providing free access to our ships that are operating in that area.

I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened. We have not seen them able to conduct any kind of organized attack to regain any territory that they've lost. We've seen levels of violence going down.

I think soon after I became director of the CIA - President Obama pulled me into the Oval Office and said: 'Look, I just want you to know that your top priority is to go after Osama bin Laden.'

I think what both Republicans and Democrats need to do and the leaders on both sides is to recognize that if sequester takes place, it would be disastrous for our national defense and very frankly for a lot of very important domestic programs. They have a responsibility to come together, find the money necessary to de-trigger sequester.