William M. ``Mac'' Thornberry: “let me begin by making two points as completely clear as I can: Number one, it is not a choice between attacking…”

“let me begin by making two points as completely clear as I can: Number one, it is not a choice between attacking hardened targets with a conventional or a nuclear capability. There is nearly $300 million in this bill to explore conventional capabilities. The question is, should we explore other options as well? So it is false to say there is a choice. Secondly, this bill does not authorize any kind of new nuclear weapon. That has to be for future Congresses and future administrations to consider. What this bill does is try to remove firewalls which prevent us from even exploring whether a different kind of nuclear weapon can help make us safer. Those who advance this amendment say we do not even want to think about it, do not even consider the possibilities. It seems to me that if anyone is going to rush to judgment, as the gentlewoman from California said, it would be those who support this amendment, that say under no circumstances are we ever going to have any kind of nuclear deterrent, other than what we had during the Cold War. The challenge, Mr. Chairman, is that all we have now are nuclear weapons that were specifically designed to deal with Soviet Union targets, and there is a real question about whether a number of folks in the world would take that kind of nuclear deterrent seriously, whether we would ever use the kind of weapons the gentleman from Massachusetts was discussing on a much more limited, smaller kind of target.”