Lawrence DiRita Quotations

We altered the rotation of units during the January elections, and I think its perfectly plausible we'll do the same thing for these elections.

I would expect fully that he will come back and give an assessment of where he thinks he is. I don't know, I simply don't, whether that will include his recommendation on the way ahead.

If we're asked not to proceed, or ordered not to proceed, then we won't. That's the plan.

but there just has been no decisions made.

It is accurate and should not be surprising that the Department of Defense is attempting to improve its long-standing human intelligence capability.

It is likely we will get down to the baseline after the election,

I think every government in the world, particularly a NATO ally, understands the potential effect on relations with the United States if these kinds of frivolous lawsuits were ever to see the light of day.

I think one of the principle lessons is that in a disaster of a certain scale, there is no other department of government that can provide the resources and the planning and the advanced thinking than this department,

We have a lot of skilled people, a lot of energy, and a lot of money. But I question whether the DoD is the best place to be doing these things.

When we turn over two dozen forward-operating bases, that's two dozen that no longer require US military, ... So at a certain point you have to start to connect that to force levels.

You drop in the 82nd Airborne, and you have a bunch of guys on the ground waiting for their equipment to show up,

Decisions were made then that seemed appropriate at the time. And now the Iraqi government is making decisions that seem appropriate to this point.

They're trying different ways to place these things, they're trying to keep focused on US activities, ... We're always trying to learn off of them, they're always trying to learn off of us.

There is no unit that is directly reportable to the Secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in the Washington Post article. ... Further, the department is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in this article.

It's not known, to the best of my understanding.

It's still classified, ... along with a lot of the underlying planning.

There was already a significant flow of Guard troops. Changing the nature of the operation wasn't going to get people there any faster.

Generally speaking, as is true anywhere, if these kinds of lawsuits take place with American servicemen in the cross-hairs, you bet it's something we take seriously,

For the next election, I wouldn't be surprised to see it go right back up to 160,000 based on puts and takes and in-place rotations and relief, and everything else,

These are countries that are starting, together, themselves to identify as a region, as the Central American region. The Central American Free Trade Agreement is one example. Countries in that region, for example, have contributed troops to Iraq, and they've contributed at least a commitment to work on maybe joint peacekeeping activities, things of that nature. So, it's developing an identity as a component of the inter-American system and I think the Secretary would very much like to strengthen that.

The department remains in regular consultation with the relevant committees in Congress and with other agencies within the intelligence community, including the CIA.

an adversary that continues to develop some sophistication on very deadly and increasingly precise standoff weapons.

The last number I saw was 161,000, but you're going to start to see that come down pretty dramatically because that was in-place relief and holdovers,