Joe Lieberman: “I rise to oppose the Hollings amendment. The Senator from South Carolina raised a question: Who cares about the country?…”

“I rise to oppose the Hollings amendment. The Senator from South Carolina raised a question: Who cares about the country? Who is putting the country's interests and security first? I assure him that Senator Collins and I, the members of our committee from both parties, care about the country, care about the security of the country, worry about the imminence of a terrorist attack, read the reports, came in in July and August and September, worked real hard to produce this proposal. Talk about treating something casually, the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina would casually eliminate all our work and that of the 9/11 Commission and a series of commissions going back to 1947, when the National Security Act was adopted, recommending a strong national intelligence director. What you are doing is creating a position that is cosmetic, that has no teeth to it, and will not be able to do what we need to do. It will bring us back to where we were before September 11, with no one in charge and, even worse, the appearance of someone in charge. Witness after witness--people no one would treat casually, Secretaries of State, heads of the intelligence community, the past three or four of those people said: The worst thing you can do is to create a position and not give that position the authority to direct the intelligence community. With all respect, that is what the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina is doing.”