Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator. I will try not to disappoint in that regard. Mr. President, fellow Senators, distinguished chairman and ranking member, I think certainly we have had a civil and a good airing of an issue that is of considerable concern to, I think, every Member of this body. I am a little disappointed in that we started out acknowledging it was a very deep and serious concern to every Member of this body, as it was to the commission, in their Report on America's Strategic Posture. I felt that along the line a little bit the concern was denigrated. I want to back up on that one more time and say that, in my judgment, and in the judgment of members of this commission, the issue of tactical weapons exceeds, in severity, in concern, the issue of strategic weapons. I understand one might argue that you are arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin as opposed to which is of the most concern. But I come back to the reasons I gave as to why I think the tactical issue is important more than the strategic issue. That is, on the strategic issue, we are in about the same position we were 40 years ago, with the exception, and admittedly an important exception, that the raw numbers are down. When we started this 40 years ago, each party had about 6,000 warheads. As I said, if either party pulled the trigger and launched 6,000 or some significant part of that, obviously that is the deterrence that each party was counting on that neither would do that.…”