David Durenberger: “I rise today to support the retirement of Adm. Frank Kelso at his current rank of full admiral. I will take a back seat…”

“I rise today to support the retirement of Adm. Frank Kelso at his current rank of full admiral. I will take a back seat to no one in this chamber in my support for equal treatment of women in the Armed Forces or anywhere else. And I will not deny for a minute that the Navy, perhaps worst among the armed services, is ill-equipped to deal with sexual harassment to the point of being tolerant of it. Just today I wrote a letter to Navy Secretary Dalton concerning a case of a young woman from Minnesota who is a victim of the Navy's inability to handle sexual harassment complaints. It is an intolerable situation. And if any good is to come out of this debate today I hope it will be that the Navy will finally understand that they will lose the confidence of this Congress and this country if they do not shape up. But even that strongly held view does not justify what has been proposed here today. It is quite simply wrong to reach a judgment and carry out a sentence in a case with disputed facts on the floor of the U.S. Senate.”