Political Quotes

“This amendment creates a new provision in existing ballistic missile sanctions legislation to allow the President to assume that certain exports to countries of proliferation concern are sanctionable under American law. This is accomplished by creating a rebuttable presumption and shifting the rules of evidence and current practice. The current law on ballistic missile proliferation says that if certain goods are exported to a Missile Technology Control Regime [MTCR] missile program, then the sender can be sanctioned. The problem in practice is that in almost every case, the available intelligence indicates that the item in question is going to a missile program but we do not know if it is within the parameters of the MTCR--range and/or throw-weight. That is, is this equipment or material destined for some big missiles or a lot of little ones? Therefore, the administration has been using the lack of evidence as an excuse to say that ``Well, yes, this or that Chinese company did send this missile equipment to Syria but there is not enough evidence to conclude that it is going to an MTCR missile program and not to a smaller missile program outside the parameters of the MTCR''.”