Long-term, we must figure out a way that the Kurdish territory within Iraq operates with a certain amount of autonomy so that they feel comfortable and safe going back.

The final FY 1994 budget amounted to a little under $252 billion in total obligational authority. To some critics of high military spending Aspin's budget plan differed little from that of the Bush administration. One news magazine stated that Aspin's major handicap was "neither his famously unmilitary bearing nor his inability to discipline himself or the enormous Pentagon bureaucracy; it is his politician's instinct for the middle ground on defense issues.

Leslie "Les" Aspin Jr. (July 21 1938 – May 21 1995) was a United States Representative from 1971 to 1993 and the United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton from January 21 1993 to February 3 1994.