It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land.

The skills of the British intelligence community are a great national asset.

I rise today to discuss the National Intelligence Reform bill. I commend my colleagues in both Houses for their hard work in coming to an agreement. As with any conference each voice is heard but none can dominate and compromise must be achieved.

I certainly believe that improving our intelligence is of important national interest.

The Committee's review of a series of intelligence shortcomings to include intelligence prior to 9/11 and the pre-war intelligence on Iraq clearly reveal how vital a diverse intelligence workforce is to our national security.

A lot of the things that we've been able to do in the last several years were Democratic ideas including the structure for this new director of national intelligence.

Since 2001 the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law major legal barriers prevented intelligence national defense and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information.

Not all intelligence can be artificial now so if we make a mistake the consequences are no longer simply located within an institution or a national culture.

Over the course of two years we arrived at a point where we began to look at the value added by making information more easily accessible across the intelligence community both defense and national.

I can remember when I was National Security Adviser the intelligence community told us... they put out an intelligence report saying that Iran would never back off from attacks on shipping in the Gulf if we use force.