Byron Dorgan: “Why do I have this in my desk? We did not shoot this bomber down. We sawed the wing off this bomber, paid for with…”

“Why do I have this in my desk? We did not shoot this bomber down. We sawed the wing off this bomber, paid for with American taxpayers' money. Does anyone know why? Because of arms control agreements by which we reduced the number of nuclear weapons and the number of nuclear delivery systems--and that includes missiles, bombers and submarines. So I have in the Senate a piece of a wing from a Soviet bomber that used to carry nuclear weapons that would threaten this country. How did that happen? Because Senators Nunn and Lugar and others, along with President Clinton, working on arms control agreements, had the foresight to put together a program by which we reached agreements by which we reduce the number of nuclear weapons and reduce the number of carriers of those nuclear weapons. So I have part of a wing strut from a Backfire bomber. I also have ground-up copper wire from a Soviet submarine that used to carry nuclear tipped missiles aimed at this country. That is our job. Our job is to reduce the nuclear threat. Not use the threat of nuclear weapons against other countries or talk about conditions under which we would use the nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike. This is nuts. We will start debating this once again in the Senate. We have these folks, and we have plenty of them here, who want to build new nuclear weapons. They want to start testing the ones we have. We do not need to test nuclear weapons. We know they work.…”