Steve Cohen: “it is curious, and I should say ``curiouser,'' as I sit in the Chamber and listen to this debate. My colleague from Iowa…”

“it is curious, and I should say ``curiouser,'' as I sit in the Chamber and listen to this debate. My colleague from Iowa says we are going to throw good money after bad. Are you saying that we are throwing bad money at our systems? Is that what we tell the American people? Is that what we tell the men and women in the service, that we have been throwing bad money at them? Was it bad money that we spent on the stealth fighter aircraft that were able to take out the Iraqi defense in a matter of a few hours? Was it bad money that we spent on cruise missiles that we used to take out their weapon storage facilities? Was it wasted money we spent on Aegis destroyers, one of the most sophisticated systems that we have? General Powell did not fight the Soviets. He fought the Iraqis in 4 days. He fought them in 4 days because we had the strategy and the capability to take down their army in that period of time with limited loss of life. I daresay, if we want to quote from pages other than page 320 of General Powell's book --we should not engage in selective quotation because a quote taken out of context can be used as a pretext. I doubt very much whether General Powell is saying that the President's budget is adequate to meet the threats of the future. I have page after page of statements coming from our service Chiefs.…”