Bill Clinton: “You've asked me a question no one's ever asked me before, but I can tell you the answer to the first question is, does…”

“You've asked me a question no one's ever asked me before, but I can tell you the answer to the first question is, does it make more sense to bring more attention to the country about it? The answer to that is yes, if for no other reason, not just because of what your people may be exposed to but because one of the reasons we decided to destroy all this before I ever came along--my predecessors made that decision, it was the right one--is that you don't want even small amounts of these kinds of chemicals in the wrong hands--can be used for very bad things. And let me also say--now, on the second question, I will have to go back and see what the facts are and see what we can do to accelerate it. I don't know enough now to give you a sensible answer, but you've asked a good question, and I will get an answer, and I'll get back to you. And let me just make one other point on this. Some of the opponents of the Chemical Weapons Convention say, ``Well, you know, you can't protect everybody against everything.'' Well, if that were the standard, we'd never have any treaties, and we wouldn't pass any laws. You know, still, some people may be able to cook up chemical weapons in laboratories in their garages. But if you look at what happened to the Japanese people, for example, when the extremist sect unleashed the sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, it was a devastating thing. Now, maybe they could or could not do that once the chemical weapons regime is fully in force and we have much tighter restrictions on what can cross national lines. But one thing we know for sure: Japan has already ratified this treaty because they have suffered through this, and they know even if somebody who has got a half-cocked idea and a home-baked laboratory can go out and do something terrible like this, there will be fewer incidents like this if we pass the Chemical Weapons Convention. And I think it's very interesting--a lot of the objections that have been raised to this convention in America were totally dismissed out of hand in Japan, a country that has genuinely suffered from chemicals like this in the hands of terrorists. But that goes back to the question the gentleman from Alabama asked, and it's one of the reasons we want to destroy our stockpiles as quickly as possible, because, in addition to the risks that people in the area are exposed to, we want to minimize the chances that anybody ever can get their hands on any of this for mischievous, evil purposes. Access to Chemical Weapons Technology [A participant requested a response to the argument that the Chemical Weapons Convention might allow some rogue states access to U.S. chemical weapons technology and asked if the President could change the treaty to ensure its ratification.]”