NAN A. S. HAYWORTH: “Mr. Speaker, in the beautiful preamble to the Constitution, a Constitution we have sworn to uphold and defend against…”

“Mr. Speaker, in the beautiful preamble to the Constitution, a Constitution we have sworn to uphold and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic, there is the mission statement, if you will, to use the parlance of the late 1990s, that it is the role of we, the people, to provide for the common defense. And there is no clearer mission and no clearer mandate than the current world condition as explained by the Rumsfeld Commission. The gentleman from Mississippi is quite right. Republicans and Democrats, acting foremost as Americans, evaluated the threat of rogue States such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and came away with the chilling evaluation, as widely reported in the press, though perhaps not with the emphasis in hindsight that should have been required, that within 5 years time, these rogue nations would have at their disposal weapons of mass destruction; specifically, intercontinental ballistic missiles, that could strike at the heartland of the American Nation, and this is what we confront. My colleagues also mentioned, Mr. Speaker, the assumption and the false impression that exists in the minds of many that the continental United States and Alaska and Hawaii are already protected from such an attack. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, that is not yet the case.”