Richard Fisher, a China military affairs specialist at the International Assessment and Strategy Center: "The Obama administration convinced the Congress to deny U.S. forces a critical capability, the F-22, in some part due to its assessment of Chinese next-generation fighter capabilities, an assessment that may not have been the 'consensus' within the intelligence community. Democracies require informed debate in order to survive. It is appearing that the debate over the termination of F-22 production was not sufficiently informed regarding emerging Chinese capabilities."
Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine: "The new year focus is on the economy, but foreign policy will generate big headlines: Israel is going to come to a decision regarding Iran's getting the bomb. Most Israelis see this as an existential issue....Israeli intelligence knows more than any other outside agency just how far along Iran's nuclear program truly is, particularly since it has a number of agents working on the issue inside Iran. Bottom line: Despite the horrific risks, the Netanyahu government will attack if it concludes Iran's manufacture of a bomb is imminent. Look for the strike to happen by Labor Day."
Rutgers anthropology professor Lionel Tiger: "How much absurdity can the country take? Two popinjay jerks with an orchard of debts mock the structure of government at its very apex. Now that government is sending 30,000 members of the military to perform Act Two of a drama to perfect a country which is not a country, to dissuade bad, violent people from arriving on our territory even though our enemies over there have perfected the knack of creating them over here. And finally, most arrestingly, the leading saint of golf, a Mr. T. Woods, has landed himself in The Worst and Oldest Sand Trap in the World."
Movie actor Clint Eastwood: "We're becoming more juvenile as a nation. The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits."
President Calvin Coolidge, on presidential hubris: "It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man. When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions."