Political Quotes

“This test, not the personnel, mind you, but this test, is really something to condemn, not to commend. The defense industry and the Pentagon have now passed their half-scaled-down, simplified test. This is really nothing to celebrate. When our schools have that failure rate, the President wants to close them down. The military-industrial complex is apparently held to a much lower standard. More fundamentally, this test moves us ever closer to violating the antiballistic missile treaty. We signed and ratified the ABM because we recognize that missile defense systems could destabilize more than they could protect. We cannot go back on our word and abandon this treaty. Peace is really our national security. We cannot be a nation that approaches nonproliferation while really practicing escalation, and that is what this test has taken us down the road to. Instead of leading the way towards responsible disarmament, we are unraveling arms control agreements. We must be a nation that decides where we really want to go. Do we want to go down a path to a new arms race, or forward to a real post-Cold War peace? Attempts to build a national missile defense system are really not enhancing our national security, they are destabilizing the world, which I heard over and over again just 2 weeks ago from our European allies.”