W. Todd Akin: “Well, the thing that strikes me about this whole situation is, first of all, if you want to deal with the nuclear…”

“Well, the thing that strikes me about this whole situation is, first of all, if you want to deal with the nuclear proliferation thing, that's one thing, but to connect it to missile defense seems to be the height of stupidity, just really an irrational decision. And to walk away from the fundamental principle that the job of the Federal Government more than anything else should be the defense of this country, the security of the citizens who pay for that defense, and to give that idea up for the old concept of mutually assured destruction, just makes no sense whatsoever. We were on the right track to develop missile defense. The people that said we couldn't do it were all proven wrong. We are doing it. We not only hit a missile with a missile, we hit a spot on a missile with a missile, metal-on-metal collisions. And not only have we been able to do that and shown that we have the technology to do that, but now what we're talking about doing is even going beyond that to the airborne laser system, which just this last year, firing its last shots before it was going to be shelved, it was called by the Democrats a big science experiment--I suppose that's a pejorative term saying we don't think much of it--and yet this aircraft flying off the west coast engaged two targets. One was a liquid rocket motor missile. It was launched from some considerable miles away, in excess of 100 miles, I believe, and this airplane locked onto the missile with its--it has two small lasers.…”