Political Quotes

“we are in a race, and the participants in the race, along with the United States of America, are nations like North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Communist China, and to some degree, Pakistan and India. The other participants in this race seem to understand that it is a race because they are doing everything that they can to develop offensive missiles that have increasing capability and can go long distances, now almost to the point where this last shot that was fired over Japan by the North Koreans, the so-called Taepo Dong 1 missile, a 3-stage missile, had enough range to reach portions of the United States of America. That is the North Koreans now, years before the CIA ever thought that they would be this far, have now developed a missile that has ICBM capability. That means the capability to reach parts of the United States. Now, on the other side of the race is the American effort to develop defenses against these missiles, and this American effort really started in 1983 when then President Ronald Reagan told the Nation that we were entering the age of missiles, and that we had to do something about it, and that rather than just have the ability to retaliate; that is, throw our missiles back at that enemy, whoever it might be, we needed to be able to develop the ability to shoot down incoming missiles.”