Political Quotes

“We have, I think, come to the conclusion--most of us, but not all in this body--that it would be a mistake to put an explicit time limit, for example, on our presence in Bosnia, or an explicit time limit on certain other kinds of military activities or threatening national security activities because, of course, what that does is enable the party against whom the action is being taken to simply ride it out and to understand if they can just get by the next 60 days or 6 months, then they will not have to worry about that. So we have always taken the position that when it comes to this kind of thing--national security--our actions should be somewhat open-ended to ensure that the other party begins acting in the way that we would like to have that party act. Obviously, when you have a 2-year sunset on these kinds of sanctions, you eliminate that flexibility.”