Univision: on Homeland Security

Barack Obama: Remain vigilant & focus forcefully on groups like al Qaeda

A: Well, we're still doing an investigation. The natural protests that arose were used as an excuse by extremists to harm US interests. We have to remain vigilant. Look, when I came into office I said I would end the war in Iraq--and I did. I said that we would begin transitioning in Afghanistan. But what I also said was we're going to have to focus narrowly and forcefully on groups like al Qaeda. Those forces have not gone away. We've decimated al Qaeda's top leadership in the border regions around Pakistan, but in Yemen, in Libya--increasingly in places like Syria-- what you see is these elements that don't have the same capacity that a bin Laden or core al Qaeda had, but can still cause a lot of damage, and we've got to make sure that we remain vigilant and are focused on preventing them from doing us any harm.

Mike Gravel: Terrorism is not a war; treat it as a criminal act

A: Well, the first thing that you would do is to realize that terrorism is not a war. Our war on terrorism makes no sense. We've had terrorism since the beginning of civilization, and we'll have it to the end of civilization. It must be treated as a criminal act for what it is. The US should now interface with Interpol and with other countries to bring these people to justice, but our government has done just the opposite. We had the help of Iran to do away with the Taliban three years ago, then we called them an "Axis of Evil." We had the help of other countries, and now they do--our government doesn't need them. We have a database of 7 million stolen passports at Interpol and it's headed up by an American, and not one American intelligence agency has ever accessed that database. We can't even put the dots together here little more than can we do it globally.

Ron Paul: We have a de-facto draft; we can achieve more in peace

This whole idea, we're going through the same argument, the light at the end of the tunnel. We did this in the ‘60s when I was in the service. And we finally left Vietnam, tragically. But we do much better in peace with Vietnam. We trade with them. They have become Westernized. What we achieved in peace we couldn't achieve in war.