Byron Dorgan: “I am listening to this debate, and I guess I just do not understand. We are hearing that it is important for our country…”

“I am listening to this debate, and I guess I just do not understand. We are hearing that it is important for our country to begin studying or developing, researching a new class of nuclear weapons, a new design of nuclear weapons, low yield--which is an oxymoron--low-yield nuclear weapons, bunker buster nuclear weapons. I was thinking of something Martin Luther King said, which was: ``The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. We have learned the secret of the atom but forgotten the sermon on the Mount.'' I don't understand what we are thinking about here. At a moment in history when we need to be the world leader in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and reducing the threat of nuclear weapons, we are debating whether we ought to begin producing more nuclear weapons. Is there someone here who can't sleep because we don't have enough nuclear weapons? There is roughly 30,000 nuclear weapons on this Earth.”