Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator for giving me the opportunity to respond, if I might, to some of these issues. One of the issues General Chilton, the Stratcom commander, I think testified to was an assumption there would be nobody cheating. As I said before, history is replete with examples of the Russians cheating on these agreements. And furthermore, what they agreed to was not--the treaty is 700, but what General Chilton and the nuclear force structure plan would call for is 720. It is 240 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, up to 420 ICBMs, and up to 60 bombers. Again that adds up to 720. All this amendment does is simply make consistent what the nuclear force structure plan as outlined by General Chilton and others would be with what the treaty requirements would be as well. Again I want to make one point about this. I said this earlier but we have 856 launch vehicles, delivery vehicles in our arsenal today. The treaty calls for 700 so we are making a 156-delivery vehicle reduction to get down to the 700 number. The Russians today at 620 in effect are already below the 700 number and they are headed down even lower to somewhere in the 400 range. So we have made a significant concession with respect for delivery vehicles at no cost whatsoever to the Russians.”