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......”This great country of ours has never been steered off course when we have advocated freedom and promoted strong families. But neither can it be preserved without unwavering commitment to our national security. You know as Americans we are blessed to have the greatest fighting force for freedom in this entire world, our men and women in the United States military.

You know, there are some out there, misguided souls that just say you can’t find heroes any more. My, my…are they ever wrong. We have heroes today. They are fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan - the sands of Iraq. There are those on covert missions, in places we don’t even know about, to find and destroy the enemies of this country. They put their lives on the line every day so we don’t have too. Over the years I have been so honored to have met so many of those great heroes as I’ve traveled to their outposts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve signed letters, to their loved ones, for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. I consider myself so fortunate to have been able to wear the uniform of our country. And that experience informed my perspective about our defense policies. Specifically, I believe we must never put the military on the chopping block for arbitrary budget cuts as part of some political horse-trade. Never!

The question we must ask is not, what we can afford to spend on our military, but what it costs to remain secure and free. See, a real key component of keeping America secure, is keeping Israel secure. We can never forget, we can never forget, that it was Israel that took out the nuclear capabilities of Iraq in 1981 and of Syria in 2007. Israel is our ally, they are our friend! And when I am president of the United States, America will again stand with our friends.

We’re not going to compromise with our national security. And that is true when it comes to defense spending and when it comes to border security. And let me say this about border security. I have lived and breathed this issue for over a decade as a border governor. I’ve signed budgets that contained a total of $400 million dollars of state security operations along that border. I’ve dealt with the carnage caused by those who traffic in drugs, weapons and people. As border governor, I know first hand the failures of our federal border policies and I know the answers to those failures is not to grant amnesty to those who broke the laws to come into this country.

I was proud to sign legislation requiring a photo voter ID to vote in order to protect the integrity of our elections. And for the obvious security reasons, I vetoed legislation to give drivers licenses to illegal aliens. There is no homeland security without border security. Let me repeat that, there is no security without border security. And make no mistake about it, what we are seeing south of our border is nothing short of a war being waged by these narco-terrorists. They represent a clear and a present danger to our country - they are spreading violence to American cities; they are peddling poisons to our children. In the face of this threat, we shouldn’t take any operations off the table, including security operations in cooperation with the Mexican government, as we did with Columbia some years ago. You can’t have liberty - you can opportunity - you can’t have prosperity, without security.

The issue before our leaders, of both parties, is securing a better future for all Americans. You see, economic security is the topic of discussion at millions of dinner tables all across this country of ours. In the last two months I’ve had the great privilege to travel across this great country. And I’ve listened to thousand of Americans and they’re not under any illusions about the current state of our country. They’ve never mistaken hope for a handout — because they want to earn their keep. They’re not looking for soaring speeches, they’re looking for common sense solutions. And they know our first order of business of getting America working again, is sending the president to the private sector.”........