Joe Lieberman: “What I fear from the amendment is that the effect of the amendment will be to limit our ability to sell cost-effective…”

“What I fear from the amendment is that the effect of the amendment will be to limit our ability to sell cost-effective items to these three governments, not just the ones that the Senator may consider to be bloated in expense. And more to the point of the second example that I have asked him about, I think it will have the unintended consequence of shackling us in our attempt to benefit from the willingness of these three countries to assist us in a time of international crisis. I want to make a final point about the comment that the Senator made in passing that this is about, the NATO enlargement debate is about principle, not about jobs in America. In my opinion, as I tried to indicate yesterday, this debate really is about a principle, about the principle of freedom that was secured and won in the cold war and that we now, in my opinion, have a moral obligation to ratify that victory in the freedom won by countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, countries that suffered during the cold war and the long years of Soviet Communist domination, to welcome them into this military alliance which is based on the principle of freedom, also on collective defense.”