Ed Markey: “this Administration has Arms Control Amnesia. The President has decided to unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-ballistic…”

“this Administration has Arms Control Amnesia. The President has decided to unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. He and his administration do this without really fully understanding what the response from China will be. In fact, if we decide that we are going to attempt to deploy a system, by the way, one on which we have already spent $50 billion without any real success, then there is a very high probability that there will be a dramatic increase in Chinese expenditures on their missiles that will be pointed at the United States. We have already been through that arms race for generations. It is time for us to end that race. The ostensible justification for pulling out, however, is September 11. That event was not caused by the absence of a missile defense; it is because we did not have a policy of thinking about thoroughly the terrorist threats that could in fact jeopardize the lives of ordinary Americans.”