Joe Lieberman

It seems to me as I read the report, which is an excellent piece of work, that the most comprehensive set of recommendations is not with regard to the sort of flash button--flashier public issues.

My support of it is contingent on safeguards and the most important of those safeguards is robust support on the laboratories.

What we have to hope is that any nation such as Iran or North Korea will be deterred from turning over weapons or fissile materials to terrorist groups.

Ayatollah Khameni is not about to see the end of Iran or Shiism in order to fulfill the wilder comments of President Ahmadinejad.

Do nuclear weapons still deter? I know that you've thought about that and I invite it.

I think the world is far safer today because of what the Nunn-Lugar program has done.

Dealing with this imbalance is urgent.

Nuclear elimination would, ``require a fundamental transformation of the world political order.''

I know Senator Bill Nelson, my colleague on the Strategic Subcommittee, supported this, as have others, and we thank you for your service and the importance of it.

The issue, the feeling that we had, members of the panel, thank you so much for your service, that two things were happening.

There's only one thing more important to the Iranian regime right now than the development of nuclear weapons and it is the survival of the regime.

To do so will require not just diplomacy but, I liked your adjective, coercive diplomacy, and probably the most effective thing we can do is to put very strict severe economic sanctions on them or the threat of those.

I think you spoke with real clarity which is that it's not going to be easy to convince the Iranians to stop the nuclear program.

I appreciate that. I agree totally and that's a real concern.

It may be the tipping point.

But it would also have, in a larger strategic context, a very threatening impact on the existing nuclear nonproliferation through the world and that would be a terrible consequence.

There's surprisingly little discussion in Congress today of America's strategic nuclear posture.

The security begins at the target and emanates outward, not with the expanse of the ocean.

I think this is part of its historic role that's gone back for 200 years. It's a part of who we are as a Nation.

It does have costs. We have to find a way to increase the responsibility of the private shipping business to self-protect here.

We in the United States I believe need a clearly stated policy with respect to these sorts of attacks on our flag vessels.

From a larger, if I can say, international citizenship point of view, a safety point of view, it's not the right decision.

Incidentally, in terms of the numbers that Senator Inhofe was talking about, one of you mentioned the number that I've seen in the press and it becomes part of the background, but it really is a stunning and shocking number, that the…

My time is up, but I'll be interested to hear as this goes on what the international community intends to do and what our government intends to do to try to make the government of Somalia more stable.

These are criminals and if we treat this criminal activity as being attributable to poverty, we're going to be ineffective in dealing with it.