John Kerry: “I will join, I hope with the vast majority of colleagues on this side of the aisle, to vote against this bill even…”

“I will join, I hope with the vast majority of colleagues on this side of the aisle, to vote against this bill even though the bill is an important bill and it is one that I have worked on with the ranking member and chairman for a long period of time. I know the chairman worked diligently to try to break this bill free of the Mexico City language and to try to have the capacity to move forward on the floor. I applaud him for his good-faith efforts to do that. Let me say to my colleagues that this is a tragedy of enormous proportions. It is dangerous. It is damaging to the interests of the United States to tie the U.N. arrearages and larger policy questions to one issue, to one point of view, by a very narrow percentage of Members of the U.S. Congress who want to tie it in this way to the United Nations. It is a form of a kind of political blackmail. The reality is that the United States of America is going to lose significant prestige, significant leverage, and our interests are going to be set back in the international arena. We are going to be hurt with respect to issues like Bosnia. If anybody mistakes it, all you have to do is look at the way in which the coalition fell apart over Iraq and the issue of holding Saddam Hussein accountable for weapons of mass destruction.”