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I suddenly realized at the CIA that I had to make life-and-death decisions about people.

Leon Panetta

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Leon Panetta
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 28
Former Director Of The Central Intelligence Agency
Lawyer
Political Scientist
Politician
Monterey
California
Leon Edward Panetta
Make
Life
People
Cia
Suddenly
Realized
Decisions
Decision
Death

More quotes by Leon Panetta

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The last thing I want to do is to make the mistakes of the past.
Leon Panetta
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When you're smaller and leaner, you're not going to have that large a presence throughout the world.
Leon Panetta
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These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline.
Leon Panetta
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The most important thing we can do is prosecute the offenders, deal with those that have broken the law and committed this crime. And if we can do that then we can begin to deal with this issue and send a signal this is not a problem that we are going to ignore in the United States military.
Leon Panetta
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The terrorism from 9/11 has metastasized. It's metastasized in Iraq and Syria, in Nigeria, in Somalia, in Yemen and in other places in North Africa. We need a very comprehensive strategy to deal with that threat.
Leon Panetta
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The United States has to be a leader in the world, because the problem is: If we are not leading, nobody else will.
Leon Panetta
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Iran is isolating itself from the rest of the world.
Leon Panetta
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I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened.
Leon Panetta
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Go forward, knowing that you are greater than the challenges of your time.
Leon Panetta
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I think the primary message to the world is that the United States is going to remain the strongest military power in the world.
Leon Panetta
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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.
Leon Panetta
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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.
Leon Panetta
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We are a nation at war. This is also a time for hard choices. It's about ensuring that we are able to prevail in the conflicts in which we are now engaged. But it's also about being able to be strong and disciplined in applying our nation's limited resources to defending America.
Leon Panetta
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The one thing that I remember from all of my intelligence briefings and my dealings with the Russians is that when you deal with the Russians, you have to deal with them from strength, not from weakness.
Leon Panetta
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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.
Leon Panetta
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Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.
Leon Panetta
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Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaida or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaida. That's really the measure of success for the United States.
Leon Panetta
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I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Leon Panetta
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Iran's continued drive to develop nuclear capabilities, including troubling enrichment activities and past work on weaponization documented by the IAEA, and its continued support to groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations make clear that the regime in Tehran is a very grave threat to all of us.
Leon Panetta
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I think a quality that a national security adviser must have is the ability to set up procedures.
Leon Panetta