Rob Bishop: “I agree totally with the gentleman from Missouri, who is such a leader on the Armed Services Committee. Part of the…”

“I agree totally with the gentleman from Missouri, who is such a leader on the Armed Services Committee. Part of the problem, nuclear soft power notwithstanding, we are talking about the overall defense of this country, and in area after area we tend to be weakening our position. I agree with the gentleman that we should not have scaled back in our laser technology. I agree definitely that last year we made a mistake when we cut the kinetic energy intercourse program, those mobile rockets aimed to stop missiles coming at us. I agree that we made a mistake when we limited the number of ground-based missiles that we had, ready to go. The silos ready to be filled, we just simply stopped it, artificially, arbitrarily, and that puts us in a weaker situation. I am also concerned that when you add to what they're talking about doing about on the Constellation program for NASA, it's not just about the manned space flights. It's also the impact that has on the industrial base that prohibits us from ever changing course in any of these other particular areas. It is all part and parcel with what I think is perhaps a very cavalier approach to the defense of this country that time after time after time overlooks the details and how those details interact and puts us at a more vulnerable situation. Once again, no one will ever attack us because we are too strong. They could attack us because we have failed to bring a bag of nails into battle with us.”