Political Quotes

“as momentum builds for the deployment of missile defense and the abandonment of the obsolete ABM Treaty, those who oppose missile defense are getting more and more desperate in their arguments. One argument that we're hearing with more frequency is the threat of the suitcase bomb. This argument maintains that we shouldn't be spending our scarce defense dollars on ballistic missile defense when there are easier and cheaper ways a potential enemy could deliver a weapon of mass destruction to the United States. Rogue states could just smuggle a bomb in on a ship, or put it in a suitcase in New York, or drop biological weapons into our water supply. A missile defense system won't do anything to stop a suitcase bomb, so it must be a waste of money, or so the argument goes. This argument is repeated with such frequency, it might be useful to state for the record why it misses the point. Let me state the most obvious reason first. The presence of one kind of threat doesn't mean you shouldn't also defend against other threats. Imagine if this logic were applied consistently to our approach to national defense. Why have an army if you can be attacked by sea? Or, why have air defenses if you can be attacked by land? Such reasoning is absurd. If we refused to defend against one threat simply because other threats exist, we would end up completely defenseless.”