John Tierney: “I thank the gentleman. Even if we were to assume on our wildest dreams, because that is essentially what it would be…”

“I thank the gentleman. Even if we were to assume on our wildest dreams, because that is essentially what it would be, North Korea, one of the poorest nations in the world, that cannot even feed its own people, would wake up some morning and would have the vision that it wanted to commit mass suicide, and assuming it is several years in the future and they had somehow developed a nuclear missile with the capacity to even reach our coast with any sort of precision at all, it would be much more likely they would put a biological or chemical weapon on it, in which case they would use multiple warheads. In that case, it would overwhelm any limited national missile defense system we would have. We are having to project forward and do a system that is much larger, and get into hundreds of billions of dollars and a prospect that is unrealistic. The second issue is the issue of confidence. Ostensibly we are doing this to have some sort of strategic advantage over some rogue nation holding us hostage with the prospect that they might send off a weapon of mass destruction by missile. The fact of the matter is that there is speculation that we may not be able to come close to 100 percent effectiveness. Twenty or so years ago when they were talking about President Reagan's Star Wars, one of the groups that was advocating against it used to come out with an umbrella with holes in it and say that is the kind of protection you are getting.…”