Political Quotes

“With respect to China, China is trying to step into the superpower shoes that were left by the Soviet Union, and I think their intent toward the United States is best manifested by the fact that their most recent purchases from Russia have been antiship missile cruisers. Now, those are ships that were built by Russia with one goal in mind, and that is of destroying American aircraft carriers. You may recall that we embarrassed China with respect to the Taiwan crisis. We moved the fleet in, and we backed them down. They were throwing missiles over the bow as the Taiwanese were trying to hold their elections. They were embarrassed by that, and I am sure their military vowed to never have it happen again. So they have been going about the task of acquiring a lot of missile capability, some of it supersonic, some of it with the ability to zig and zag so that our antimissile shipboard defense systems will not be able to hit them. They are doing that for one reason. They want to be able to sink our ships and destroy the young men and women that operate those ships. China is becoming very aggressive.”