Jim Inhofe: “I have heard so many sincere speeches by Members of the House and Members of the Senate, and I have heard a lot of…”

“I have heard so many sincere speeches by Members of the House and Members of the Senate, and I have heard a lot of redundancy. We certainly have the resolve to do all we can to go after those who were responsible. The one question I have heard over and over again is: Did we receive a warning? Were we warned this was going to happen? I look at this in a little different context in that this should serve as a warning to us. It is time to get something on the record in the Senate as to what this means and what it really could mean in the future. Ironically, at the time this happened I was on the ninth floor of the Hart Building in the Nation's Capitol complex, and I was looking out the window as I was speaking to a group. The last phrase of my speech was the same as it has been since 1995, and that is: We in the United States are in the most vulnerable and threatened position now as a nation than we have ever been in this Nation's history. As I said that, it happened to be right at 9:30 and I saw this billowing smoke come up from the area of the Pentagon, to find out later the tragedy really took place. We are vulnerable, and we are vulnerable in three areas, certainly in conventional forces being one-half the force strength we were in 1991. We have to understand this; the American people have to understand this: We deployed our very rare resources to places where we should never have sent an American, such as Bosnia or such as Kosovo.”