Political Quotes

“I do want to rise in support of the Kyl amendment No. 4892 and echo the sentiments expressed by my colleague from Tennessee about the good work of the Senator from Arizona. He has been a tireless advocate for modernization. It is something that needed to happen, irrespective of whether there was a treaty, but it certainly became a condition in order to have a treaty. If you are talking about reducing the number of your nuclear weapons, you certainly want to improve the quality of the ones you have. Unlike other nuclear powers, the United States has not had an active modernization program for our nuclear deterrent. We have heard from people who recognize the importance of modernizing our nuclear deterrent. I will not reiterate all of those, but I wish to point out, Secretary Gates said recently--he couldn't be any more clear that nuclear modernization is a prerequisite to nuclear reductions when he said: To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the numbers of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.”