Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, like all members of our Committee on National Security, I have the greatest respect for my friend from South Carolina, and I want to thank him for all of his efforts and work with respect to missile defense. I want to also thank Members on the Republican side, and I know I am looking at Mr. Weldon, and I think of him and Mr. Hefley and Hal Rogers and others that signed a letter to Israel in 1987 saying that although you have great fighter aircraft and you have great armor and great ground troops, if a missile was launched, a Russian missile from a neighboring Arab country, you would have no defense against it, and we asked them to drop the LAVI fighter system and start developing a theater ballistic missile defense system. I want to thank them for that letter to our SDI leaders and to Israel, because it had an effect in turning Israel away from building fighter aircraft and doing what they knew they had to do for national survival, and that is defend against incoming missiles. And I might say to my colleagues that that projection turned out to be an accurate projection.”