Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we have another amendment that is up that I think is very significant. It is one having to do with verification. I think if we look at all of the problems we are trying to address with amendments--we have been talking about missile defense, which is the one I have been most passionate about; we have been talking about other areas, too--in the case of verification, it is very significant to understand that this New START treaty has remarkably less verification than the START I treaty did. There are only 180 inspections over 10 years under New START versus 600 inspections over 15 years in START I. That is a drop of 40 inspections per year to 18 inspections per year. In a minute, I will tell you why I think it is more precipitous than that because of the significance of the inspections as the arsenals are dropping down in terms of the percentage of inspections versus the arsenals. The New START treaty inspections to verify the elimination of nuclear weapons delivery systems have been fundamentally changed from those in START I, replaced with a lesser provision of twice a year permitting the other party to view the debris from half of the eliminated first stages. In a minute I will break these down, but what I am talking about is that we have a treaty now that addresses two things. Type one is the ICBM bases, the submarine bases and the air bases. These are delivery systems. I think this has to be talked about as well as the actual warheads.…”