John Tierney: “However, I have to make mention that I think we are going in the right direction perhaps in reducing the amount of money…”

“However, I have to make mention that I think we are going in the right direction perhaps in reducing the amount of money allocated to national missile defense, but we are not going far enough. We would all love to throw an umbrella around this country and stop any type of missile projection coming in here; and if we could do that, there would not be a Member of Congress that would hesitate to vote for it. The fact of the matter is that we do not have a system that works that way, and every reputable scientist indicates that we will not have a system like that in the foreseeable future, if at all. The Pentagon's own operations office and research office and technical office has indicated that not only have the tests not been successful to indicate that a system would work, but that the regime for testing as we go forward is not adequate to ever give us the confidence that any system would be reliable. In essence, we would be buying a false sense of national security.”