Political Quotes

“Madam President, I will make a couple quick points before we vote on the delivery vehicle amendment, and the first one is this because it has been observed that this would impact Prompt Global Strike. The supporters of the treaty have said it will not impact Prompt Global Strike. The fact is that the 700 number of delivery vehicles--if, for example, we were to mount a conventional warhead on an ICBM to strike a target in some geographic area that is hard to hit and we need to get there in short order, the ICBM currently is the best way to do that. If we do that, it reduces the number of nuclear delivery vehicles we have one for one. If we were to do that on 20 ICBMs, we would mount conventional warheads on those, and it would reduce by 20 the number of nuclear delivery vehicles we would have. That is a fact in the treaty. The final point I will make about the number 700, because it has been pointed out that military personnel in the country support that number, but I also want to mention that it is important to recall that General Chilton's support for New START levels was predicated on no Russian cheating. He testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 22, 2010, that one of the assumptions made was an assumption that the Russians in the postnegotiation time period would be compliant with the treaty. We all know it has been pointed out many times on the floor how Russia is a serial violator of arms control commitments.…”