Political Quotes

“As my friend will remember, a man named Werner was a very dynamic leader of NATO, a German who was made the number one man in NATO. I recall being in Brussels. Don't hold me to the year. I think it was somewhere around 6 over 8 years ago. There was a lot of saber rattling going on relative to Greece and Turkey. I remember asking Werner about what this all meant. We were about to have a meeting. He was having a luncheon for me, as they do for any Senator who will go over and pay attention, and with the permanent reps and some of the military. He said to his assistant general so and so, and general so and so, one a Turk and one a Greek, 'Call them in the office.' They called them in the office. He basically said, 'What is going on, fellows? What is the deal?' The Turkish and Greek military representatives of NATO sat there and in the privacy of that room discussed the politics in their own country; why they didn't see there was much of a problem, but you have to understand it is going nowhere. If any formal mechanism is put in place, the ability of that Greek general and that Turkish general to walk into a room and totally off the record say, 'We think this, we think that,' and talk about it in front of a German, and an American, all members of NATO, that would evaporate. Now we will have set up a bureaucratic deal, no matter what it is, no matter how tenuous it is, now it is posture.”