On the recordDecember 21, 2010
the answer to the question--why not clear it up--is because if you clear it up the way the Senator is trying to, you kill the treaty. Pretty simple. The Senator keeps asking the question, Why can't we do this? We can't do it because it kills the treaty. It is pretty simple. And the Senator knows it kills the treaty. Now, going beyond that, come back again just for an instant to the substance. First of all, the Russian general staff--I have been known, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to make some comments which occasionally the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not agree with. My comments are not going to drive them to do what they do not agree with. Likewise, the chairman of their foreign relations committee whom he quotes was tweaking us in his comment. But the fact is, the general staff of Russia has made it abundantly clear they do not want to build these rail-based mobile. They have no intention of doing this. They have just been destroying them. They have been taking them down and destroying them in a completely verifiable manner, and the Senator from Arizona cannot contest that. He knows that is absolutely true. So this is a completely artificial moment designed, as others have been, to try to derail--no pun intended--the treaty.
