Byron Dorgan: “It depends on when you interdict the launcher. But my point was, I guess most people would say you are not proposing a…”

“It depends on when you interdict the launcher. But my point was, I guess most people would say you are not proposing a system that could respond to that threat. So, again, on the scale of threats, you have some you respond to, some you do not. Look, I would not support a penny for research and development if I did not think it is reasonable for us to be trying to figure out what are the threats and what is a reasonable approach to begin thinking about them and planning to meet them when they become sufficiently real that the intelligence community says this country needs to do something about those threats. The Senator knows, and we have said before in this debate, that the intelligence community in this country does not concur that this is the time to do what is being proposed we do. The Defense Department tells us that it will undercut the arms control agreements and launch us into an orbit to spend an enormous amount of money against a system that the Senator now concedes will not respond to the more aggressive or robust threats.”