Political Quotes

“this bill calls upon the NATO alliance to agree to a robust second round of enlargement at its summit meeting in Prague late next year. The bill does not call for the admission of any specific country to NATO, but is broadly supportive of all seven leading contenders for admission in the next round: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. I will not dwell on the qualifications of the individual countries, other than to say each has made great progress in the difficult transition from the prison house of communism to the promise of democracy in the free market. Forcibly separated from the West for decades, each is now reclaiming its rightful place in the Western community of nations. It would be shameful, as well as stupid, for us to ignore their pleas to become members of the Atlantic alliance. For over half a century, NATO has been the foundation upon which the security of the West has rested. NATO's continuing importance to the United States was most recently demonstrated in this unified response to the terrorist attacks of September 11 when article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one member of NATO shall be considered an attack upon them all, was invoked for the first time in the alliance's history.”