[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 71 (Wednesday, May 25, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5914-S5916]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   HONORING THE SERVICE OF DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PAUL WOLFOWITZ

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, last Friday, May 13, Deputy Secretary of 
Defense Paul Wolfowitz ended his distinguished tour of duty at the 
Department of Defense.
  During his 4 years at the Pentagon, Secretary Wolfowitz played a 
critical role as our Nation responded to the terrorist attacks of 
September 11, and our military defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan and 
liberated Iraq from decades of tyranny. We continue to fight an all-out 
global war on terrorism, guided by the policies which Secretary 
Wolfowitz, acting as a true partner to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, 
helped to craft.
  He was a true partner with Rumsfeld throughout. I have had some 
modest experience in the Department having served there myself during 
the war in Vietnam as Secretary of the Navy. I served under Messrs. 
Laird and Packard. I served under three Secretaries.
  Their partnership, as the two principal's sharing an evergrowing, 
awesome, level of responsibilities has been exemplary in the annals of 
the Department of Defense.
  On April 29, I was privileged to attend a ceremony at the Pentagon in 
honor of Secretary Wolfowitz's years of service. The speeches given 
that day--by General Pace, Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary Wolfowitz--
are among the finest I have ever heard, and are a true testament to 
this extraordinary individual. I wish Secretary Wolfowitz well as he 
prepares for his new duties as the President of the World Bank. I ask 
unanimous consent to have these speeches printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Hosts a Full Honor Review and 
     Award Ceremony for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz

  (With Remarks by: General Pete Pace, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of 
                                 Staff)

       Dr. Paul Wolfowitz is recognized for exceptionally 
     distinguished public service as deputy secretary of Defense 
     from March 2001 through April 2005. During that critical 
     period, Dr. Wolfowitz's performance was brilliant. While 
     overseeing many of the department's day-to-day operations, he 
     was also a key leader in developing United States policy to 
     respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.
       A leader in developing United States policy to respond to 
     terrorist attack, and an internationally recognized voice for 
     freedom,
       Dr. Wolfowitz contributed to the intellectual framework for 
     operations in Afghanistan and Iraq that removed two brutally 
     oppressive regimes that encouraged and gave sanctuary to 
     terrorists. Fifty million people are now free from the bonds 
     of tyranny. Self-government is on the march in countries once 
     believed beyond freedom's reach. And Afghanistan and Iraq 
     have become our newest allies in the war on terror.
       While addressing these sizable challenges, Dr. Wolfowitz 
     was a driving force in addressing President Bush's charge to 
     transform the Department of Defense to better fit the 
     challenges of the 21st century. He encouraged a culture of 
     planning that stresses innovation and supports intelligent 
     risk in areas ranging from defense organization to technology 
     development and training.
       And Dr. Wolfowitz is a tireless advocate for America's men 
     and women in uniform. A frequent visitor to wounded forces 
     and their families in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, 
     he paid particular attention to the needs and concerns that 
     went beyond the typically excellent care they receive. Dr. 
     Wolfowitz oversaw the creation of a 24-hour operations center 
     to reduce bureaucratic procedures for the severely injured, 
     significantly improving the flow of information to ease their 
     burdens during recovery.
       Dr. Wolfowitz's countless achievements reflect his keen 
     intellect, management acumen, vision and compassion.
       Through his dedication to the pursuit of policies of 
     freedom and transformation, Dr. Wolfowitz contributed greatly 
     to the work of the Department of Defense and the United 
     States. The distinctive accomplishments of Dr. Wolfowitz 
     reflect great credit upon himself, the Department of Defense, 
     and the United States of America.
       Dr. Wolfowitz has also received the Decoration for 
     Distinguished Civilian Service from the secretary of the 
     Army, the Distinguished Public Service Award from the 
     secretary of the Navy, and the Decoration for Exceptional 
     Civilian Service from the acting secretary of the Air Force.
       Gen. Pace. Secretary Rumsfeld, Mrs. Rumsfeld, Senator 
     Warner, Senator Coleman, assembled leadership of the 
     Department of Defense, special guests and friends, and 
     especially to our wounded servicemembers who are here today.
       It is my distinct honor and privilege to stand here 
     representing our Chairman, General Dick Myers, and all the 
     men and women who are proud to wear the uniform of the United 
     States Armed Forces to say farewell and thank you, Mr. 
     Secretary, for all you've done for all of us in uniform 
     during your tenure as our deputy secretary of Defense.
       It's been my great honor and privilege, Secretary 
     Wolfowitz, to have known you and worked with you for the last 
     three-and-a-half years, and in that time, I think I've gotten 
     to know a little bit about the man.
       You have great humility. Of all the titles that you have 
     earned--doctor, professor, dean, ambassador, secretary--the 
     two you prefer most are Dad and Paul. That says a lot about 
     you.
       You're a man of great intellect. Put simply, you work hard 
     and you're smart. And you make those of us who work with you 
     feel good about our contributions, and you elicit from us our 
     very best recommendations, because you are, in fact, a 
     facilitator and a person who values the judgment of others--
     and for that, we thank you.
       You're also a man of great courage. Those of us who wear 
     the uniform understand courage on the battlefield, but 
     there's another very distinct form of courage, and that is 
     intellectual courage. Many times it has been my great 
     pleasure to watch you, when conversations have been going in 
     a particular direction, and someone would turn to you and 
     say, ``Don't you agree, Paul?'' And you would say, ``No, I 
     don't.'' And then you'd explain why you didn't in a very, 
     very well-reasoned, articulate way that although did not 
     always carry the day, certainly made everybody in that room 
     understand that you were part of this process, and that you 
     were going to speak your mind as you knew it should be 
     spoken, and benefit all of us in uniform by always speaking 
     the truth, as you knew it.
       You're also a man of compassion. If I speak too much about 
     this, I will blow your cover. But the fact is that many, many 
     times in the halls of this building, you have said to me, 
     ``Pete, Sergeant so-and-so--or Lieutenant so-and-so, or 
     General so-and-so--has a problem, and I think if you say 
     something to him, or you look into this, it will make life 
     better for him.'' Certainly, all that you have done for the 
     wounded, both in your official capacity, but also as a human 
     being in your visits to the hospitals, in your caring for the 
     families, in your attendance at funerals, in your caring for 
     the families of the fallen.
       In all those ways, Mr. Secretary, you have shown enormous 
     compassion. And for that, we are grateful. We will miss you, 
     but we know that there are millions of people around this 
     world who are now going to benefit from the intellect, 
     strength and compassion of Paul Wolfowitz as you go to lead 
     the World Bank.
       It is my great honor now to introduce the man in this 
     building who works harder than anybody else, has more focus 
     than anybody else, and makes the rest of us work very, very 
     hard, very diligently, to be part of the team that is trying 
     to do for this country all that we should be doing.
       Mr. Secretary: Secretary Rumsfeld.
       Sec. Rumsfeld. Well, thank you all for coming. We're 
     pleased you're here. A special welcome to Paul Wolfowitz and 
     his family and friends and lovely daughter, Rachel, sitting 
     there. And welcome to Chairman John Warner. We appreciate 
     your being here, your old stomping grounds. And Senator 
     Coleman, thank you so much for being here, and all the senior 
     military and civilian officials of the Department of Defense 
     and guests. Welcome.
       Three years ago, The Economist magazine had an interesting 
     take on the job of deputy Cabinet secretary. It wrote, ``Most 
     deputy secretaries live lives of quiet frustration. They get 
     stuck with all the grunt work, while their bosses swan around 
     in the limelight. And they have to sit mutely while the

[[Page S5915]]

     best ideas are either buried or stolen.'' And then there's 
     Paul Wolfowitz. (Laughter.)
       History is not always generous to the men and women who 
     help to shape it. Great abolitionists like John Quincy Adams 
     and Frederick Douglas would not live to see full equality for 
     African Americans that they had envisioned and fought to 
     bring about. Many brave East Germans were shot as they tried 
     to breach the Berlin Wall and would never see the wall 
     crumble under the weight of lies and pretensions that built 
     it. But sometimes history is kind, and it gave President 
     Harry Truman, for example, and George Marshall the chance to 
     see the fall of the Third Reich and the fulfillment of their 
     charge to rebuild Western Europe.
       And it allowed Corazon Aquino, with the help from a young 
     assistant secretary of State, Paul Wolfowitz, to see the 
     triumph of people power in the Philippines, the dream her 
     husband had nurtured and for which he was cut down before it 
     was fulfilled.
       And although it may not always have seemed to Paul, the 
     fact is history has smiled on Paul, as it should.
       So he leaves us today with the good fortune of seeing so 
     much accomplished--or being accomplished, I should say--he 
     helped bring to fruition or things that he helped set in 
     motion: reform and the modernizing of America's defense 
     establishment, the dispatch of dangerous regimes in 
     Afghanistan and Iraq, the spark of freedom and self-
     government that is finding oxygen in the Middle East.
       Paul now will add one more title to all the titles that 
     Pete Pace listed, and it's a heady list. When I stood with 
     Paul at his welcoming ceremony at the Pentagon way back in 
     2001, more than four years ago--it seems like eight--
     (laughter)--I noted that this was Paul's third tour in the 
     Department of Defense. I told him we were going to keep 
     bringing him back until he got it right.
       Well, he got it right this time. The activities he has been 
     involved with over the past four years are extensive. He has 
     helped craft four defense budgets and supplementals. He has 
     helped bring new technologies to protect our troops. And he 
     has helped to reconfigure a number of Cold War systems and 
     organizations to help us meet the threats of the 21st 
     century.
       So as we bid Paul a warm farewell, I might just say a word 
     or two about the Paul Wolfowitz that I have worked with these 
     past four years. They say in life people tend to fall into 
     one of two categories--dreamers and doers. Well, our friend 
     Paul is a bit of a ``mugwamp,'' as they used to say in the 
     old days; he's a bit of both, one who lives the creed that 
     ``think as a man of action and act as a man of thought''.
       He grew up in Brooklyn in a household of Polish immigrants 
     for whom names like Hitler and Stalin and words like 
     holocaust were not abstractions or simply pages in a history 
     book. And it should be no surprise to those who know him that 
     one of Paul's early political acts--at the age of 19, I'm 
     told--was to participate in the March for Civil Rights with 
     Dr. Martin Luther King.
       Paul was a bright young mathematician who drifted into 
     political science, undoubtedly disappointing his father, who 
     I am told would have preferred he pursue a career in a real 
     subject, like chemistry or something like that. But Paul's 
     analytic talents have been put to excellent use as someone 
     who has grasped future trends and threats before many were 
     able to and before some probably wanted to.
       As early as the 1960s, he foresaw the dangers of nuclear 
     weapon programs in the Middle East In the 1970s he identified 
     the territorial ambitions of Iraq as a future concern for the 
     U.S. military. And before September 11th, he grasped that the 
     civilized world could not make a separate peace with 
     terrorists and that our future security was certainly linked 
     to addressing the freedom deficit in much of the Muslim 
     world.
       History will see Paul as one of the consequential thinkers 
     and public servants of his generation. He's worked to ease 
     the burdens of the wounded and their families, as we've seen. 
     And he's departing the Pentagon now, but the legacy that Paul 
     has been a part of, the ideas he has helped to weave into 
     public and private debates, the effects of the policies that 
     he's championed so effectively and with such courage and 
     determination are not going anywhere, because they're not 
     found only in this building or only in the department all 
     across the globe; they are found now in towns and villages in 
     Indonesia, where I'm told that pictures still hang in tribute 
     to an American ambassador who put the aspirations of 
     dissidents and ordinary Indonesians above the temporary 
     convenience of power politics.
       They're found in Afghanistan today, where a democratically 
     elected government now protects women and imprisons 
     terrorists, instead of imprisoning women and harboring 
     terrorists. And they're found in a schoolroom in Iraq, where 
     a young girl will learn real history and real subjects 
     instead of lies and tributes to tyrants.
       That girl is free, and so are millions like her--and that, 
     in part, is because of you, Paul. You've been on their side. 
     And as General Pace said, you have never wavered. The 
     threatened, the oppressed and the persecuted around the world 
     must know in their heart that they have had a friend in Paul 
     Wolfowitz. You are one of those rare people who, as the 
     Talmud puts it, would rather light candles than curse the 
     darkness.
       So I thank you, your country thanks you, and on behalf of 
     the Department of Defense, we wish you Godspeed in your new 
     post, a post of service to the world. The department will 
     miss one of its finest public servants, and I will miss a 
     treasured friend. Godspeed.
       Staff: Ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Secretary Paul 
     Wolfowitz.
       Mr. Wolfowitz. Thank you all for coming today.
       Thank you for braving the weather. Thank you, all of you 
     who helped arrange the weather so that we could stay 
     outdoors. I appreciate it enormously.
       Senator Warner, great chairman of our Armed Services 
     Committee and a good friend all these many years, and 
     particularly the last four years, thank you for being here. 
     Senator Coleman, and so many distinguished guests. You really 
     do me honor to be here.
       Secretary Rumsfeld, thank you for those extremely generous 
     remarks. Thank you for an award, which recognizes me, but 
     actually recognizes the work of literally millions of great 
     Americans. Your remarks call to mind something that President 
     Johnson said on a similar occasion many years ago when he 
     said he wished that his late parents could have been alive to 
     hear that introduction because his father would have been so 
     proud, and his mother would have believed it. (Chuckles.) 
     (Laughter.)
       Maybe now is the time to come clean and to thank you for 
     something else. For four years now, I've been 
     telling audiences about what you said about keeping--
     bringing me back until I got it right. It gets a laugh 
     every time. So I want to thank you for that great line. 
     It's been good to me all those years.
       And now I'd like to just turn the tables a little bit and 
     trade a story somewhat along the same lines. It may be 
     apocryphal, but it's just too good to check whether it's true 
     or not. It's about how Don Rumsfeld once asked Henry 
     Kissinger if he was planning to come back as secretary of 
     State. And Kissinger said, ``No, Don, I got it right the 
     first time.'' (Laughter.)
       So, Don, it looks like we've been in the same boat all 
     along!
       Truthfully, Don Rumsfeld has a great sense of humor, that's 
     why I can tease him a bit too. And he's known for many other 
     things: His determination, his forcefulness, his command of 
     the podium, his charm, his matinee idol good looks--yes, he's 
     one of the stars of C-SPAN!
       But to be totally serious, what really stands out for me is 
     something that may not be widely known, and that is what a 
     great teacher Don Rumsfeld is. He has sharpened everybody's 
     thinking and raised everybody's standards. And he's taught me 
     an enormous amount. He encourages and cajoles everyone to do 
     better, always for the purpose of making this Defense 
     Department as good as it can be, and to make our country more 
     secure.
       It's been my good fortune, Don, to have you as a friend, 
     and America's to have your steady leadership at this 
     demanding helm. Thank you.
       I also want to say thank you to so many of my wounded 
     veteran friends from Walter Reed and Bethesda who have braved 
     the weather to be here today. There are so many other 
     distinguished guests and friends and colleagues, that if I 
     tried to mention you all and give you the thanks you deserve, 
     I'd just get into deeper trouble. At a time like this, words 
     inevitably fall short, and I'm sure I'd leave someone out. 
     But you don't do a job like this without enormous amounts of 
     help.
       So, to each one of you who has been there along the way, 
     just know that I am deeply grateful for what we've shared 
     during this most important chapter of American history.
       And I'm particularly grateful to my personal staff, an 
     extraordinary combination of civilians and military, active 
     and reserve, officers and enlisted, who make a difference 
     every day.
       Last Friday I was privileged to be present at the White 
     House when President Bush announced his nominee to be our 
     next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There in front of 
     me was an extraordinary team of civilian and military 
     leaders. First, there was our president, whom it's been such 
     an honor to serve. I've been privileged to be there as George 
     W. Bush has made some of the toughest decisions a leader can 
     make. I can tell you that this is a man who understands the 
     true costs of war, and his charge to defend what we hold most 
     dear. We are blessed in this time of testing to have a 
     president who possesses the deep moral courage to do what it 
     takes to protect our country.
       Next to him was Secretary Rumsfeld, and there too was our 
     chairman, General Dick Myers. As we wage this global war, 
     Dick's been a leader of quiet, reassuring confidence; a rock 
     of strength and a source of steady judgment and deep concern 
     for those he serves. Dick never forgets that every decision 
     he makes directly affects the individual men and women who 
     serve this country so well.
       And its been my good luck to have as my closest military 
     counterpart most of these past four years, General Peter 
     Pace, our vice chairman. It was a special moment last Friday, 
     Pete, to see you nominated to be the first Marine to serve as 
     chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You have the 
     character, the commitment and the courage to do an 
     outstanding job as our top military leader.
       I'm delighted, Gordon--that Gordon England, our secretary 
     of the Navy, who has been an outstanding member of this 
     civilian military leadership team, has agreed to take

[[Page S5916]]

     on this challenging job--and it is challenging.
       Over the last four years, I've had the privilege of working 
     with perhaps the finest group of Joint Chiefs and combatant 
     commanders that we've ever had. And our many outstanding one- 
     and two-star flag officers promise to continue or even exceed 
     that record of excellence.
       But the people who have earned a truly special place in my 
     heart, in all of our hearts, are the men and women whose 
     names don't appear in the papers or on the evening news; the 
     ones who serve America quietly and professionally every day, 
     the men and women who wear this country's uniform, and the 
     dedicated civil servants who support them. They are the ones 
     who deserve our special and lasting gratitude. They are 
     represented here today by these magnificent troops and by our 
     wounded veterans. Please join me now in recognizing them for 
     their service.
       And let us remember in a special way those who have fallen 
     in service to this nation. They remain in our hearts, each 
     one of them, a reminder that our country is blessed beyond 
     all measure. Let us never forget how much we owe them.
       When terrorists attacked us so ruthlessly on September 
     11th, they may have thought they knew who we were. They may 
     have thought we were weak, grown used to comfort, softened by 
     everything we enjoy in this great nation. But they 
     were wrong. They must have failed to notice that it was by 
     the sweat and blood of each soldier, sailor, airman, and 
     Marine, and each member of the Coast Guard, that America 
     has met every threat throughout our history.
       When we needed them, the heroes of this generation stepped 
     forward to defend America from terrorists. In the process, 
     two brutal regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq--regimes that 
     harbored and encouraged terrorists--have been removed from 
     power. And as a result, 50 million people, almost all of them 
     Muslims, have also been released from tyranny.
       In a region where many thought freedom and self-government 
     could never succeed, those values are beginning to take hold. 
     The tide is turning against the terrorists' brand of 
     totalitarianism. Like Nazism and communism before them, this 
     false ideology is headed for the ash heap of history.
       And at the same time that we are facing the enormous of 
     winning a global war, we've also advanced the president's 
     agenda for transforming the department. We've made major 
     adjustments in programs such as the Trident Submarine Force, 
     new classes of surface ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, Army 
     artillery and Army aviation, missile defense and 
     transformational communications across the department.
       We've introduced a whole new civilian personnel system for 
     the department. And along the way, we've done four regular 
     budgets, four budget amendments, and at least six 
     supplementals. None of these decisions was easy; indeed, many 
     were difficult. But in no small measure, because of what 
     seemed, at times, like endless hours of meetings--and no, 
     Don, I'm not complaining--we managed to achieve agreement 
     between the senior civilian and military leadership of DoD.
       Senator Ted Stevens paid tribute to that fact this past 
     week when he said, ``I've never seen such a relationship 
     between chiefs and the secretary--open discussions, open 
     critique--and really, a give and take that was very helpful 
     and very healthy as far as the department is concerned.''
       However, as important as these programmatic decisions have 
     been, transformation is most of all about new ways of 
     thinking; about how to use old systems in new ways. During 
     the last four years, the concepts of transformation and 
     asymmetric warfare have gone from being theoretical concepts 
     to battlefield realities, and are even penetrating our vast 
     acquisition apparatus, from the bureaucracy, to industry, to 
     Congress.
       But I don't have to tell this audience that all our 
     marvelous machines and technology would mean nothing without 
     innovative and skillful people to employ them.
       And even then, this department would be of little value if 
     our people lacked one particular quality. It's the 
     indispensable quality and the most precious one of all, human 
     courage. In this job, which has been so much more than a job 
     to me, I've seen courage in abundance.
       I remember the valor of an Army sergeant named Steve 
     Workman. In the desperate moments after Flight 77 slammed 
     into these walls, he risked his life to get Navy Lieutenant 
     Kevin Shaeffer out of the building and to the medical 
     attention he desperately needed. Sergeant Workman stayed with 
     the badly wounded--burned officer and kept him talking and 
     kept him alive.
       I'll remember the bravery of people like Corporal Eddie 
     Wright, a Marine who was hit by an RPG that ruptured his 
     eardrum, broke his femur and, most seriously, blew off both 
     his hands. In the confusion, Marines who had never seen 
     combat before needed reassurance, and it was Eddie Wright, as 
     badly wounded as he was, who gave it to them, telling them he 
     was fine, giving instructions on his own first aid, pointing 
     out enemy positions while directing his driver to get them 
     out of the ambush zone. Like so many of our wounded heroes, 
     Eddie's moving on in life with the same courage that he 
     summoned in those desperate moments in Iraq.
       And I remember October 26, 2003, the day our hotel in 
     Baghdad, the AI-Rashid, was attacked. Tragically, a great 
     soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Chad Buehring, was killed that 
     day, and five others, civilian and military, were severely 
     wounded.
       Visiting the hospital that afternoon, I spoke to an Army 
     colonel who was the most severely wounded. I asked him where 
     he was from, and he said, ``I live in Arlington, Virginia, 
     but I grew up in Lebanon, in Beirut.'' So I asked him how he 
     felt about building a new Middle East. He gave me a thumbs-
     up, and despite his obvious pain, he also gave me a smile. 
     Today Colonel Elias Nimmer is now virtually recovered and 
     still on active duty with the U.S. Army.
       But courage comes in many forms. Sometimes moral courage, 
     the courage to face criticism and challenge-received wisdom 
     is as important as physical courage, and I see many examples 
     of that. One such hero I've been privileged to know is Navy 
     Medical Doctor Captain Marlene DeMaio. She was convinced that 
     there was a serious flaw in the way we were designing body 
     armor. In the face of considerable resistance and criticism, 
     she put together a team whose research proved the need to 
     modify the body armor design. She and her team took on the 
     bureaucracy and won. Her moral courage has saved countless 
     American lives in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
       There are so many other stories I could share, but I will 
     tell you just one more. Three months ago, I attended a 
     funeral at Arlington for a soldier from St. Paul, Minnesota. 
     Sergeant Michael Carlson had been killed just before the 
     January 30th elections in Iraq. Not long after those historic 
     elections, I received a letter from his mother.
       Mrs. Carlson wrote to tell me how much it meant to her to 
     see the joy on the faces of Iraqi voters, men and women who 
     had risked their lives for something they believed in. She 
     knew her son shared that same sort of vision, and she sent me 
     an essay that he had written as a high school senior that 
     explained how she could be certain of that. It's a remarkable 
     essay, particularly from such a young man.
       Michael had been an outstanding high school football 
     player, but he didn't want to become a professional athlete. 
     He wrote, ``I want my life to count for something more than 
     just a game. I want to be good at life. I want to fight for 
     something, be part of something that is greater than myself. 
     The only way to live forever,'' this high school senior 
     wrote, ``is to live on in those you have affected. I 
     sometimes dream of being a soldier, helping to liberate 
     people from oppression. In the end,'' he said, ``there's a 
     monument built to immortalize us in stone.''
       Men and women like that, men and women like Michael Carlson 
     do become immortalized because they live on in our nation's 
     soul.
       President Reagan used to ask, where do we find such people? 
     And he would answer: We find them where we've always found 
     them, on the streets and the farms of America. They are the 
     product of the freest society man has ever known.
       On one of my visits to Iraq, I met a brigade commander who 
     told me how he explained his mission to his men. He said, ``I 
     tell them what they're doing in Iraq and what their comrades 
     are doing in Afghanistan is every bit as important what their 
     grandfathers did in Germany and Japan in World War II, or 
     what their fathers did in Korea or Europe during the Cold 
     War.''
       That colonel was right.
       It's been a privilege of a lifetime to serve with the 
     heroes of this generation who will be remembered with the 
     same gratitude as we remember those who have gone before. 
     Nothing is more satisfying than to be able to do work that 
     can really make a difference, and I've been lucky to have 
     many opportunities to do that, but this one was as good as 
     they come.
       Now the president has asked me to take on a new mission 
     that of working on behalf of the world's poor. Although I 
     leave the Department of Defense, I believe both our missions 
     serve the goal of making this world a better place. It's an 
     honor. But I have one big regret: I'll be leaving some of the 
     most dedicated, most capable, most courageous people in the 
     world.
       In many speeches over these years, I've been accustomed to 
     ask the good Lord to bless our troops and our country. While 
     I do it for the last time as your deputy secretary, I want 
     you to know that I will always carry these words as a prayer 
     in my heart: May God bless you, may God bless the men and 
     women who serve this country so nobly and so well, and may 
     God bless America.

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