Kent Conrad: “Mr. President, the Conrad-Bingaman amendment is designed to address the question of tactical nuclear weapons. Let me…”

“Mr. President, the Conrad-Bingaman amendment is designed to address the question of tactical nuclear weapons. Let me just review briefly the circumstance we face, and remind my colleagues that unlike strategic weapons, unlike conventional systems, we have no treaty with respect to tactical nuclear weapons. This chart shows the record on arms control. The red line is Russian forces; the blue line, U.S. or NATO forces. We can see under the Conventional Forces Treaty we have had steep reductions. In terms of strategic systems under the START accords, the same pattern--deep reductions on both sides on strategic systems. But on tactical nuclear weapons we don't know what has happened on the Russian side, although we have an estimate from our strategic commander, General Habiger, that they have 7,000 to 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons; we have about 1,600. Terrorist use of a tactical nuclear weapons would be devastating. It would make what went off in Oklahoma look like a firecracker.”