On the recordJuly 31, 2014
Madam President, I don't know about nuclear options, but I do know about national security. When we have objections to some career ambassadors--I am not even talking about other nominees who are equally as important to places in the world where we face a challenge. But when I extract those out of the list that are also pending before the Senate in critical places in the world and just say, my God, if a career ambassador--someone who serves under Democratic and Republican administrations and has committed their life to the service of our country in the foreign service--cannot get to their places, I don't understand. I don't understand how we can actually object to places like Guatemala where we are having the crisis that we just debated right now. Wouldn't it be great to have a U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala to direct the Guatemalan Government as to our concerns about how children are coming here? Wouldn't it be great to have the Ambassador to Turkey at a time when we have all of these challenges in the region, where Turkey has a huge number of Syrian refugees. And we say we object to those? Or Vietnam, where we are looking at a 123 nuclear agreement and where we are concerned about what China is doing in the South China Sea as it ultimately challenges Vietnam in international waters for drilling purposes? And the list goes on and on. So let me at least try some.…
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