force. mr. secretary, can you elaborate on your thoughts of the devastating impacts if sequestration takes place. >> i've been saying this, and i think you understand. you take -- you take a meat ax approach to the defense budget where you basically cut $500 billion across the defense budget. what you're basically going to be doing is weakening every area of the defense budget. you're going to impact on structure. whatever -- you're going to impact on compensation. you're going to impact on our ability to develop the weaponry that we do need for the future. we're virtually going to have to stop production on most of the key weapons that we have in production. as a result of that kind of impact. bottom line, bottom line is that

sequestration would be totally irresponsibility. it would devastate our national defense. it would weaken this country. and it would tell the rest of the world that the united states is going to be fot only a weak power, but unable to respond to the threats you pointed out. >> general dempsey, last week you talked about the current environment being the most dangerous time that you can remember in your 38-year career. can you please expand on that and what that means in the context of sequestration? >> yeah, it's a bit of a strategy paradox. the great powers are not any longer really standing against each other, but there are plenty of comp pet tors. but there are a wide variety of nonstate actors, super impowered

individuals, terrorist groups who have acquired capabilities of monopoly nation states. when i said it's the most dangerous period in my military career, 38 years, i really meant it. i mean, i wake up every morning waiting for that cyber attack or waiting for that terrorist attack, or waiting for that nuclear proliferation. waiting for that proliferation of technologies that makes it an increasingly competitive security environment across the globe. the effective sequestration will be that we'll have to go back and redo our strategy. the strategy that we just adapted from to this emerging defense strategy, as we describe it. we have to redo that. as the secretary said it would, in my personal military judgment, impose unacceptable risks to our national security. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. secretary and

general dempsey and your entire team. i guess i can say that this is a room where we always look up to you, mr. secretary. but we do appreciate your service. in san antonio, military city as we call it in texas, as i'm sure in a number of other cities there's been great interest in your comments about base realignment and closure. san antonio, as you know, actually gained -- though a traumatic gain, with the closure of burks air force base there in the last round, the city under the leadership has already reached out to find, i think 139 additional acres, if there's a need for expansion we see the cyber command as a place where warfare alternatives can be provides to those facilities

that we have here in the washington area. i think the proposal that senator hiutchinson has put forward to include oversee bases in the review, that there at least needs to be a mechanism in any future bracket to consider where our oversees commitments are. i would ask you to consider that as we go forward. all of us have thousands of veterans in our areas and people that are military retirees. you have a number of proposals that you're considering that would impact the military retirees. can we assure those who are retired now or who are nearing retirement that they can feel that their retirement on fixed income is secure? >> with regards to your last question, yes.

our goal with regards to looking at retirement, we made clear, the president made clear, that any changes, that people who are serving in the military, who have served or about to retire, tla get full retirement benefits, as promised to them our goal is to look to the future and see what we can make. with regards to your overseas bases question, and i understand exactly what the thrust of the legislation is about. we do have the authority to close based overseas, obviously, pursuant to the treaties and the diplomatic relationships that we may have. but nevertheless we have over the last few years cut over 100

bases. we have in the process of taking down two of the four brigades in europe. that will involve additional infrastructure reductions as well. so i'm trying to do this on the basis of substance. what do we need to have? what do we need to maintain? >> two more controversial issues. one of them, i believe you are doing everything you can to seek a nonmilitary approach the iran. and i would just encourage that you continue to do that. it is difficult to see, while all options have to be on the table, how military intervention can do anything but make our families less secure. and secondly, in afghanistan, i know that your remarks have caused some extended public

discussion, and will continue to do so about our future in afghanistan. i read his article in the armed forces journal and are aware of his other comments. i'm sure they were not well received in some quarters. but as a hero who spoke out about the troubles we have there in our policies in ags, what happened there this past weekend in a very secure area, where brave americans were killed by people in afghan uniforms, i know is troubling to all of us. i think your comments that we were prepared to move forward in 2014, unlike some of my colleagues, i would like to see you more more quickly rather than more slowly, and encourage looking at our policy there to find a way to ensure our security and achieve many of our goals. ensure our security without as broad a footprint as we have today. and i thank you, mr. secretary. >> i appreciate that.

with regards to afghanistan, we really have, i think, turned the corner in 2011 with regards to afghanistan. we were able to weaken the taliban. we were able to reduce the level of violence there. the afghan army for the first time really engaged and performed well and took over key responsibilities in keyre in a transitioning areas now to afghan control and security. we just kpleeded a second that will represent 50% of the population of afghanistan, now being under afghan control and security. and we're going to continue that process. the final will take place in 2013, and our goal at that time is to move towards having the afghans take the lead on combat

operations with our support. we'll still be in combat mode and support, but we're going to try to move that responsibility over to the afghans, but maintain our transition through the end of 2014. nato is unified on that path. it represents what we agreed to. i think it's the right path. even with the events over the last weekend. i have to tell you the afghan army performed well. they controlled the demonstrations. the level of violence was able to go down, and they performed very well, which gives us additional confidence that these guys can do the job that we've asked them to do. >> mr. chairman, i would like to take the opportunity to know that my silence are not agreement with your position, and i would be happy to speak with you about it. to understand the complexity here, there seems to be stark black and white choices.

i would love to have the opportunity to talk. >> i look forward to visiting with you. >> we had the opportunity to hear you in the defense proep ration sub committee. always cop peling and thoughtful testimony. and i appreciate it. my friend who also had the benefit asked some really good questions on sequester. i want to ask you a timing question and probability question. in your view, and you've been around this place, number one, how likely do you think it is that sequester will really happen? because i'm actually very afraid about it. but, you know, everybody seems to just sort of -- well, that will never happen. of course, we all thought the super committee would work. that wasn't supposed to happen. but we're here. the second thing is from your planning standpoint, how much time do you need to prepare for

that? congress has theter the electio address whether or not there's a sequester. what does that do you to in terms of ards to sequester, i sure as hell hope it does not happen. as i said, it would be a terrible reflection, i think, on the congress and the leadership of this country if the leadership of both parties were not able to come together and detrigger that mechanism. and i, you know, i do remain confident. i really do, after 40 years in this town. having been through a lot of battles. legislative battles and challenges. that i still have a deep fundamental belief that in the end despite the politics, despite, you know, the back and

forth that often takes place in this congress, that when it comes to our national skurkts and when it comes to issues like this, that ultimately the right decisions were made. so i remain hopeful that you will do the right thing with regards to sequester. with regards to planning, i mean, we are not -- we're not planning on sequester. as general dempsey pointed out, i would have to throw the strategy i just presented to you out the window if we had to do that with sequester. at some point i suspect they will probably in the summer have to request that questiwe take a at it and determine what steps would be taken. but i u.s. just think it would be very difficult to plan because it does have this crazy formula in which we have lix

flexibility to do what we could to i void the ill pact. >> sir, could i add to that? >> although we're not planning, congressman. the defense industrial base, which has to have value proposition and business plans are planning for it. and at some point the sequester will have its own. >> that's a great point. let me ask you as well. you mentioned it was going to take an all of the above strategy to deal with a budget deficit of this size. to your knowledge, has the president imposed entitlement reforms? >> i believe that they would include some recommendations with regards to entitlements. and i know during negotiations that some of those were put forward.

i honestly believe you have to confront that. discretionary spending is one-third of the budget. you can't ignore the two-thirds of the budget blowing through the ceiling. almost every summit that i was a part of, we had to put entitlements on the table. that led to the agreements that both republican and democratic presidents put forward. i think that's -- you know, that's where you have to go. these are record deficits you're dealing with. i never expected that we would have a trillion three deficits. that's, you know, that has to be dealt with. >> last question. we don't have a lot of time. you went through and described what the processes took to the defense appropriation sub committee just in terms of the

conditions that had to prevail to reach the desired outcome. would you mind laying that out again? in your opinion of somebody who has been through these, to achieve that kind of goal?he i' talking -- >> i'm out of time. i was trying to push his into his time. but thanks for your service. appreciate what you're doing. >> mr. secretary, i thought your statement was excellent. i love the outline that you presented. you are the right person at the right place at the right time. there's nobody in history that had the range of experiences that you had legislatively, in the executive branch and the various departments. you know this stuff. and it's important that you emphasize we will still have the most powerful military in the world and if it went beyond that

because of the outstanding capabilities that we have. you implied, but we in congress need to have more sympathy with the notion of how we deal with a notion of risk. we're not going to reduce risk to zero. you want a more balanced aproef. it's much less likely that we're going to fight two land wars. there's nobody that can engage this in naval efforts. this -- we need to be -- and i think you've done a great job, of helping us with what we need to deal with. the special ops challenges that are being faced right now. both in uniform and ia and whatnot.

and i am of the opinion that our military this is something that can be done. i've been stunned at the capacity of what they've done in the past. congress has screwed it up. congress has raised compensation levels. congress refused to talk about entitlements. lst less sustainable than anything we're talking about with medicare. we have required the military to buy equipment that it didn't necessarily want, in some cases didn't need. the political engineering of the task that you, your predecessors and the men and women in uniform have had to cope with boggles my mind. and it's amazing that it's as good as we have today. congress could not close a base. we had to come up with this jerry rigged system to deal with

military closures. and i am hopeful that we don't fail. making it harder than this difficult task is. and one of the things hoi weapon we can do, and i've talked about it before, because if we could give you a timetable of 12 or 15 years, there's a whole lot that you can do. but we forced you to do things with civilian contractors and not giving you money for oversight. and i'm hopeful that we'll be equal to the challenge in congress. i'm not worried about the president. i'm not worried about the men and women in uniform. i'm worried about congress. one of the things i've been

trying to deal with is to deal with helping the military clean up. and congress has fallen down. we haven't given you the resources. we've cut the ground out from underneath you. but we're still working. that has real applications in terms of readiness. if we did a better job of helping the military clean after itself, there would be applications that we would use to keep the men and women safe overseas and families safe around these military facilities. i've got one in portland, oregon, the result of tleel naval efforts decommissioning ships and we're going to drupt companies in portland because the department of defense is not participating in cleaning up after itself. and i wonder if -- and my time

is short b but i wonder if we can engage you in something with a better partnership when you're spending $1.7 million a minute to help bases all across the country. maybe if we didn't leave the community and turn our back on them. >> i would be more than happy to engage you in that process, having been through it at. and frankly the only away to ultimately achieve savings when you do backgrounds is to be able to do -- to have the cleanup so communities cannot be stuck holding property that can't be reuse reused. >> thank you very much. >> chair, if i could. whenever there's a dangling -- i

don't want to let it hang. >> you said we're confident we can do it and beyond. i'm not signing up yet. >> i want to thank you for joining us today. mr. secretary couldn't be more stuck by the entire need for complete reform. i think what's being swept under the rug, sadly is addressing the real fiscal challenges. if we don't stop spending money that we don't have i want to visit a comment that you made

recently regarding the nation of iran and the statement that -- and i think i have the quote correct here. that's the quote we are that iran is a refactpr. do you stand by that? >> yeah, doi. the alternative is almost unimaginable. the alternative is that their actions are so irrational that that they have no basis of planning. they have some reaction to fear, honor and interest. and i think all nations act in response to one of those three things.

the key is to understand how they act. it doesn't mean i agree with what they decide by the way. >> maybe you can understand what you believe to be the rationalal. >> well. i'm not here to justify iran. >> just to comment on the rationality. >> i don't understand them. i'm not them. i'm suggesting they take actions -- they are calculating. what i'm suggesting is we need to be equally and more calculating. to seek nuclear weapons?

for arguably the strongest ally in the world. israel. 99 in '13. what justification given what we see out of the nation of it ku you give them for the decrease in that trend line. >> with regards to israel, we have increased the amount of funds that we provide to israel. it's now 650 million. they are 320 million. we have provided significant funding for israel's arrow and ballistic missile defense programs. we have secured the funding a

great system for them against short range rockets. and what whatever decisions we have made is in conjunction with them. >> and sometimes they conquer and sometimes they haven't. >> right. i guess i would express a grave concern on the part of folks who watch this, and i know you do with keen interest and great concern. that the public statements that have been made, general, regarding what we believe israel should or should not do are harmful to the ability for planning to occur for i suspect diplomacy to occur. that some of the comments you have made, many believe empower iran to a greater degree. i would ask you if you believe

they can be deterred diplomatically. >> we've all said. everyone in uniform. >> mr. secretary? >> we are committed. not just to contain, but to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon. that's a commitment that the president and the administration has made. we have made very clear to iran that they are not to close the straits of hormuz. we think that the international community is unified in trying to isolate iran and trying to make clear to them that they have to stop their process of trying to move towards nuclear development.

that they have to stop the spread of terrorism that they're engaged in. if they want to join in a diplomatic effort. join to row solve these issues. we are maintaining all options on the table to make very clear to iran that they are not to do what we just said. >> thank you, chairman. miss caster? >> thank you mr. chairman, and secretary panetta, thank you very much for being here and all your years of service. over the past decade the threats have evolved. from conventional threats. state actors. to con conventional terrorist organizations. and the department of defense

have adapted and grown specific forces. we've invested in that. the budget has grown there. rightfully. the best examples of the values of the investment. the take out of osama bin laden. thank you very much. when the sharp shooters were able to take out the pilots. and last month the rescue in somalia of aide workers. so i think the new strategy of emphasizing the budget invests in this. the former commander eric olson always emphasized quality over quantity. but after years in iraq and

afghanistan where special operators around the globe have been assigned to the central command of responsibility, it's obvious that special operations and other parts of the world have been thinned out. >> they are asking for greater ability, flexibility and building forces in the globe back to around today want to be. you didn't get into it in detail in your testimony. or the shift to special operations around the globe? also another sequestration, i'm interested in your interpretation of across the board cuts. you said you would have to throw out your strategy. how are you interpreting it right now if worst case