Political Quotes

“the news has been focusing, and much of the discussion in this Chamber has been on, the threat that Iraq poses. I have listened to some of my colleagues today on the question of what to do about Iraq. Over and over, there is this clarion call for more time: more time for inspectors to do their work; more time to enlist more allies; more time for Saddam Hussein to comply. With all due respect, I ask them: How much is enough? We have already been at this for 12 years, 12 years since the end of the Persian Gulf war. Do we need 12 more years? One more year? I would like to flip the question on my colleagues and ask: How much time do we have? Every minute we wait, Saddam Hussein's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and to share them continue. Every minute we wait, the surviving al-Qaida terrorists plot their next attack. We fear it may be a weapon of mass destruction, particularly chemical and biological attack. Sooner or later, either here or somewhere else in the world, we will run out of time. We ran out of time in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon on September 11. Brave sailors on the USS Cole ran out of time. Our two embassies in Africa ran out of time in 1998. Over 200 innocent victims, mostly Australians, ran out of time in a Bali, Indonesia, nightclub. How many more attacks must we absorb before we realize that time is not on our side? Where will the next attack be? Will it be against a soft target?”