Jim Inhofe: “reluctantly I rise to differ with my good friend from Wyoming. I come from the perspective of chairing the Readiness…”

“reluctantly I rise to differ with my good friend from Wyoming. I come from the perspective of chairing the Readiness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I have looked carefully at some of the problems over the last 8 years in a couple of respects. First of all, we are dramatically and grossly underfunded in most of our accounts for our military relative to the threat that is out there. We have gone through a difficult time with China and hopefully it is coming to an end now. If we go back to 1995 when we started getting some of the very first comments made by the Chinese that have been very threatening to the United States, it was during the elections not long ago in Taiwan when the Chinese were demonstrating their missiles in the Taiwan Strait and the statement was made ``we are not concerned about the United States coming to the aid of Taipei because they would rather defend Los Angeles.'' That is at least an indirect threat. Most recently there have been statements made from more than one high Chinese official saying war with America is inevitable.”