Political Quotes

“Let me jump in on a couple of points. First of all, it is in my opinion it is incorrect to suggest that the phased adaptive approach is superior to the ground-based or GBI approach. I know there are people in the military who came up here and testified that it was a good idea to do that. Secretary Gates himself said that. I believe, however, if one understood the debate fully, one would appreciate that this was also a political decision made by the President and influenced by other considerations. This administration has never liked the GBI that the Bush administration developed. It is my opinion that the GBI is more effective than the phased adaptive approach, especially since the administration is not talking about deploying but merely having available the fourth stage. But GBI is a more effective system. We could have that debate, and I am happy to have that at another time. All I was trying to suggest is that the decision to remove GBI from the plan for Poland and substitute this other approach that is available at a later time, and, in my view, less effective, and also not have the GBI as a contingent backup until 2017, rather than 2015, were mistakes on our part at least, and at worst were decisions made to placate the Russians. That would not be a good thing.”