Political Quotes

“I would like to take this personal privilege of explaining why I was not able to vote last night on an extraordinarily important issue before the Senate; namely, the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO. The vote, fortunately, was 80 to 19, meaning that the United States has gone on record as supporting the inclusion of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland as members of this important alliance. When the debate started, I provided remarks which expressed my strong sentiments in support of that expansion. Throughout the debate, as amendments were offered, I spoke to several of them, attempting to defeat amendments that I thought would be detrimental to the expansion of NATO and to our mission in NATO. Fortunately, one of the first amendments adopted was an amendment which I offered, which helped us to present a strategic vision in the discussions that would be ongoing with respect to the development of a new strategic vision for NATO that reflects the beliefs of the U.S. Senate and reflects our belief that the original purposes of NATO and the original strategic vision should play a large role in animating our assistance, with our fellow NATO members, in devising a new strategic mission. I say all of that as a predicate to state in the most emphatic terms that had I been able to be here, I would have voted ``aye'' to support the expansion of NATO.”