 Thank y'all very much. Dr. Carter, C&O, McPon, Chaplin, sailors in the greatest Navy the world has ever known. Ladies and gentlemen, the C&O and I were together Saturday in New York to commission the USS Michael Murphy. And I thought there is no more appropriate way to celebrate the Navy's birthday than to commission our newest warship, a DDG-51 type, DDG-112, the Michael Murphy, a flexible, powerful, incredible projection of America named after one of our great naval heroes, Lieutenant Michael Murphy. And it sort of encapsulated, to me, what the last 237 years have represented because in 1776 we declared our independence in Philadelphia. In 1781 we won our independence in Yorktown, but in 1812 we guaranteed our independence and ensured our future by defeating then the greatest Navy in the world, the British Navy, over and over and over again in the War of 1812. And as the C&O has pointed out, we've had Navy weeks and fleet weeks up and down the East Coast and the Great Lakes. And one of the things that it's helped to do is bring the people of America closer to the United States Navy and to understanding what it is the Navy does on their behalf every single day. Because when the Navy is doing its job, we are America's away team. We're a long way from home. And usually people have no idea how good the Navy is, how widespread the Navy is, and what it is capable of. We've come a long way from old iron sides and those original six frigates that the C&O mentioned to today's very modern, worldwide fleet. But the things that make us a great Navy have not changed. This is a year of anniversaries, the 70th anniversary of Guadalcanal, one of the great Navy and Marine victories in our history. In fact, when President Roosevelt was told about the victory at Guadalcanal both on the land and through the slot and in Iron Bottom Sound, he said that from then on he knew the war in the Pacific was going to be won, that that was a turning point. It's the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the United States Navy gave President John Kennedy the flexibility and the power to impose the blockade around Cuba and the 140 ships that the Navy was able to put to sea to enforce that blockade, giving him the flexibility of doing it without escalating into thermonuclear war. And that's what the Navy does with our Marine Corps brothers and sisters. Gives the commander in chief the option and a range of options because the United States Navy can do anything that's needed. We can do high-end combat. We can do irregular warfare. We can support SOF. We can deliver humanitarian aid and disaster assistance. We can build partners around the world. Whatever it is that America needs, that's what America's Navy is there for. And the reason that America's Navy is so good, the reason that it is the greatest fighting force the world has ever known at sea, the reason that we can give this flexibility, we can give the options to the commander in chief or the sailors that go to sea. For the last decade and more we have asked a great deal of our force. We've had an incredibly high operational tempo, but we also have the most resilient force in our history. We have the best educated. We have the best trained. We have the most dedicated force that we have ever, ever had. And it's the sailors, the people who set out for toward that distant horizon. That will be the focus of mine, that will be the focus of the CNOs, the mcpon that will be the focus of the deputy secretary of defense, those sailors that give us the edge. That's our secret weapon. That's the thing that nobody else can replicate. I tell the story a lot that I was on the USS Reagan off the coast of Japan just a couple of weeks after the tsunami that had devastated that country. The Reagan had been steaming across the Pacific heading to do combat air over Afghanistan. When it got word of the earthquake and the tsunami and turned in a matter of hours and using exactly the same people, the same equipment, same methods, went from high in combat to humanitarian assistance. And they used the same techniques that they were going to use in air operations over Afghanistan to make sure that the right things got on the right aircraft in the right order, going to the right place. And the briefing that I got was delivered by a JG and a second class. Nobody else in the world pushes the type of responsibility down to the ranks we do and to the ages that we do. And nobody else even hopes for the results that we expect as the matter, of course, from that 20-year-old petty officer third class, that 23-year-old Lieutenant JG, that we take as a matter of course in the United States Navy. We have today 52,000 of our brothers and sisters are deployed forward on ships all around the world, standing the watch, making sure that America is secure. And if you look at the new defense strategy that the president announced in January that everybody on this stage had a big hand in coming up with, it is a maritime-centric strategy. Much has been asked of our Navy. Much more will be asked. And I am absolutely confident that our Navy will answer whatever task is given, whatever goal is set, and in the words of the Navy, the Navy is ready to answer all bells. Happy birthday, Navy. Semper Fortis.