Johnny Isakson: “I rise to talk about two specific subjects, one of them a very troubling comment picked up by a microphone that was not…”

“I rise to talk about two specific subjects, one of them a very troubling comment picked up by a microphone that was not believed to be live, made by President Obama to President Medvedev of Russia. It is a troubling comment to me because I spent most of the previous year in the Senate as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee working on the New START treaty, which the Senate adopted with 71 favorable votes a year ago, a treaty that is a treaty on offensive missiles, not defensive missiles nor strategic missiles. It is a treaty that began under Ronald Reagan, was ratified by George H.W. Bush shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was extended under George W. Bush and terminated a couple of years ago and needed to be renewed. It is a treaty that did three things. First of all, it reduced offensive weapons held by the Russians and the Americans; second, gave us unilateral access to Russia and the Russians unilateral access to us to trust but verify the warheads that existed; and third, new identification systems and holographs that made it almost impossible to hide or mimic nuclear warheads. It is a comprehensive treaty that is important to America, important to the free world, and, quite frankly, important to Russia. I would like to quote from the Washington Post exactly what the President was picked up as having said when he was talking to Mr. Medvedev after their official conversation.…”