Political Quotes

“Let me state my opposition and why I oppose the Craig amendment. I find this debate over the last several weeks to be, in a sense, fascinating--fascinating in this regard. The Members of the Senate who express the greatest concern about the ability of Russia to veto any action NATO takes, the Senators who--with the exception of the Presiding Officer now, who expressed that concern himself--the Senators who have been most vocal about a NATO-Russian accord are now on the floor being the most vocal about their concern about how Russia is going to greet our expanding NATO or voting to expand NATO. So that is one thing I find somewhat anomalous. Yesterday, I found it somewhat strange that those who did not want us entangled in border wars in Europe, as they phrased it, or ethnic conflicts in Europe, were the very people who wanted to give up our veto power to be involved in those. That is, right now, under the organizational structure of NATO, if all 15 NATO nations say we should go in and settle this dispute here in Europe and we say no, that is it, we don't go. I found it somewhat anomalous that they were, yesterday, prepared to say: Look, let's have this new dispute resolution mechanism which forced us, whatever iteration it would have come out in, to give up our veto power over that.”