Dale Bumpers: “I do not know how more forcefully you can abrogate the treaty than to pass this bill. Now, obviously, it is not going to…”

“I do not know how more forcefully you can abrogate the treaty than to pass this bill. Now, obviously, it is not going to be abrogated until the Soviet Union gets a stomach full of this kind of stuff and withdraws from the treaty, which they have a right to do on 6 months' notice. But, first of all, I want you to look at the language of the treaty. As I said this morning, English is the mother tongue. That is what we speak. That is what we write. And here is what the mother tongue says in article I of the 1976 Protocol of the ABM Treaty. "Each party shall be limited at any one time"--limited at any one time--"to a single area out of the two provided in article III of the treaty for deployment. . .'' You see the word "single"? That means one. "Single" and "one" are the same. Here is what the bill says. Section 233, "It is the policy of the United States to . . . deploy a multiple-site"--"multiple," colleagues, is more than one. "...United States to . . . deploy a multiple-site national ballistic missile defense system.”