Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first of all, this is the kind of engagement we need on this treaty and on so many other issues in this body. Too many times it is a Senator coming down and giving a speech, and half of us or more are not listening. And this kind of colloquy can develop more useful material for our colleagues and for the record than anything else. So I am very happy to engage in it. I just want to make sure I do not run out of my time with my colleague's questions. But here is how it relates, and here is the importance. We are being told that even though the delivery systems--and remember, this treaty deals with warheads and delivery systems. Let's leave the warheads off to the side for a moment. The delivery systems-- which are the submarines with their missiles, the long-range bombers, with cruise missiles in some cases, and our ICBM force and the Russian counterparts--those delivery systems are constrained in this treaty. The numbers are brought down to 700 deployable systems. So the question we have asked, naturally enough is, Is that enough? Will that work to cover all of the targets we need to cover? I talked this morning about--and the answer to that question depends in part on what our future plans are because--take the B-52. Most of the pilots who are flying B-52s--I think we are two generations beyond the time these B-52s were built. These are old, aging aircraft. And everybody realizes even the B-1s and to some extent the B-2s need to be replaced.…”