Political Quotes

“First of all, I have the highest respect for our colleague on the other side who has offered this amendment. Mr. Chairman, perhaps few in this body have spent as much time on missile defense as our colleague from South Carolina. I want to acknowledge that up front, and his leadership role. I do have a clarifying question I would like to ask of our colleague who offers this amendment, because there has been a lot of rhetoric spoken on the House floor in terms of what we are talking about. If my colleagues listen to our gentleman speak, he never once used the words 'star wars' during his eloquent statements on the House floor. Now I have counted at least over 60 times the Members on the other side have used that term, which means I am donating $60 to the Science Fiction Writers Foundation to help them in their activities, but our distinguished colleague never used that because he understands what we are talking about here, I think, as well as anyone. But what he does not mention in his amendment when he talks about a ground-based interceptor system is whether or not that includes or even allows for space-based sensors. Would the gentleman qualify that for me, please? My question is, as we have heard all this rhetoric about space-based and all, the gentleman knows well what we talk about when we say space-based sensors which are not actual weapons, but is a method of detecting when missiles are actually launched.”