James Carafano Quotes (16 Quotes)

He's stuck it out when lesser men would walk away. I don't care what you call that, hubris or whatever. I truthfully think just changing the captain on the ship wouldn't have made any difference. If anything, it may have slowed things down because at least that captain knows the mistakes he made.

This is the equivalent of a comet hitting the planet. Of all the things that are in the world, why are we fixated on this one thing. Scanning containers full of sneakers for a 'nuke in the box' is not a really thoughtful thing.

In terms of the physical resources the federal government brings to bear, the Corps of Engineers is going to be there a long, long time, ... Certainly, OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) will be engaged because of the safety issues, and cleanup will be enormous. EPA is going to be involved.

Given that the tsunami killed 150,000 people in Southeast Asia, I frankly think we responded pretty well to a storm that might have done the same, given the density of the population in the area where it hit. Essentially, Katrina was a nuclear bomb without a mushroom cloud or radiation.

Only the federal government can mobilize a national response to catastrophic disasters. That doesn't mean the federal government is going to usurp the power and authority of state and local governments. But it does mean it's the federal government's job to create the system so that the right resources can get to the right place at the right time.

We have a history of occupations that goes back to the American Revolution, and we always do it the same way We always just figure it out when we get there.

I can't see the House acting in any way on the Senate, and I can't see the Senate acting in any way on the House.

You can't make a million people happy. There's going to be a lot of debates. I don't think you can minimize the role Congress is going to play in what kind of legislation they formulate to guide the reconstruction. There will be enormous pressure to do something quickly. It's all new virgin territory, and it'll be tough to craft an optional strategy.

I can't think of one good example in history where a nation built another nation. Countries that succeed rebuild themselves.

At the end of the day, the F-22 just winds up being more expensive. It just pushed all the hard things to the out years, and it really didn't address that.

When we started out doing this, basically what we were doing was throwing money at the problem. In most cases, people had absolutely no idea how to spend the money.

Even more than money and the availability of money, what really slows down the reconstruction is decision-making bureaucracy and red tape,

There is no way that a terrorist campaign can disrupt the elections in the United States. This is too big a country, too many voters, too many polling places,

The president's behind him. If he left tomorrow, (deputy defense secretary) Gordon England would be secretary of defense, and defense policies and what we do in Iraq would look exactly the same.

If you had a nuclear explosion and fire or something biological in New Orleans, you'd have seen tens of thousands of casualties, ... We don't really have the capacity to mobilize the medical support for catastrophic terrorism.

There's a lack of adult leadership on both sides.