Jon Kyl: “I will respond quickly to make this point. A lot of folks over the years asked, Why has it taken us so long? It is a…”

“I will respond quickly to make this point. A lot of folks over the years asked, Why has it taken us so long? It is a good question. There are several different answers to it. First of all, this is hard. It is hard to hit a bullet with a bullet. It has taken a lot of time and effort by very smart people. I am glad we were there at the beginning, providing them the resources they needed to conduct these kinds of tests and demonstrate that we could really intercept an intercontinental ballistic missile, which is the equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet. There were years in which there was opposition to the missile defense system, in which funding was cut from the program. That crippled the program and slowed it down. There were times when we were ready to deploy something and then opponents said we don't want to deploy yet, we want to do some more testing. As a result, every time we seemed to be ready to put up something, we were pulled back--all the way back to the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan started talking about this. You have to scratch your head and wonder why it has taken us this long to get to this point. I think the most important thing, as the Senator from Alabama pointed out, is we are now making tremendous progress. We have a system deployed. It is better with every subsequent test, and as time goes on, the American people can at least begin to feel a little bit more secure. We are not there yet, as everybody has pointed out.…”