Pete Domenici: “Everybody should know that the United States of America not too many years ago had 40,000 nuclear weapons. We are moving…”

“Everybody should know that the United States of America not too many years ago had 40,000 nuclear weapons. We are moving rapidly toward 5,000--40,000 moving rapidly toward 5,000. In fact, both the United States and the former Soviet Union are having difficulty getting rid of what comes out of these nuclear weapons because they are moving so fast. That which is coming out of them is creating proliferation itself because we are moving so rapidly. We do not know what to do with the plutonium that comes out of them. The Russians don't know where to put it. But in terms of getting rid of nuclear weapons, the United States is on a path from 40,000--and I can't give you the classified number but I can tell you it is 5,000 or less. That is point No. 1. Point No. 2: The pit--the plural ``pits'' is not a very nice sounding word--is an absolutely necessary incremental part of a nuclear weapon. Without a pit, there is no nuclear weapon--none.”