Political Quotes

“I thank my very good friend from Connecticut--and the chairman of the committee because I trust that he will support this as well. This amendment passed overwhelmingly last year, bipartisan vote. The problem is that the Defense Department ignored it. They went ahead, continuing to buy weapons from Rosoboronexport, the very same Russian arms supplier that is enabling President Assad to kill more than 90,000 of his own people, who is now, we confirmed, using chemical weapons against his people. 1.6 million Syrian refugees are scattered across five countries; and within the year, half of the Syrian population is going to be in need of aid. So this has to be fixed. This is not a sustainable situation. The Obama administration says, well, we are going to have to get more aggressively involved, supplying more military assistance to the insurgents. But think about this: the problem is that Assad is getting all the weapons he wants. In fact, he's asked this Russian arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, for advanced S-300 missile defense batteries, 20,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 20 million rounds of ammunition, machine guns, grenade launchers, grenade sniper rifles with night vision sights. Mi-17 helicopters are also made by Rosoboronexport, and we're buying helicopters from them. Can't we coordinate the right hand with the left hand? We should not be basically subsidizing Rosoboronexport, which is a large part of the problem in Syria.…”