Martin Hoke: “I am going to vote for it. But I have to say that it is with some great reluctance, particularly with respect to the ABM…”

“I am going to vote for it. But I have to say that it is with some great reluctance, particularly with respect to the ABM section of the bill. Let me read first of all what the President said in his message. This is his veto message: First the bill requires deployment by 2003 of a costly missile defense system able to defend all 50 States from a long-range missile threat that our intelligence community does not foresee in the coming decade, which would require a multiple-site architecture that cannot be accommodated within the terms of the existing ABM Treaty. Well, let us just think about how intelligent our intelligence community is with respect to their speculation about this foreseeable or nonforeseeable, as they say, threat to the United States, and I will make it as current as this morning. Dateline, January 23, Beijing, China, New York Times, says that preparations for a missile attack on Taiwan by China and the target selection to carry it out have been completed and await a final decision by the Politburo in Beijing.”