Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I am in no way unsympathetic with its purposes. I certainly hope that the opposition I will speak is a bipartisan opposition. I certainly do not oppose it, certainly for any partisan reasons; I oppose it because I think it is impractical and I think it is unnecessary. I think it is counterproductive to our national security interests. We do not deploy our forces in Europe to defend someone else; we put them there because of our national security interest and concerns. It is an error to say that we have a permanent force of 100,000 people there. We have a force that is as large as we choose it to be, as small as we choose it to be. We have no treaty obligation that commits us to a precise number of 100,000 or any other number. Those who are there are there because our military have determined it is in our national security interests for them to be there. With reference to the cost, I can tell you that with the authorized force levels of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and Marines, none of them have as much manpower authorized to them as they need to execute the missions being assigned to them, so you can bring every one of the 100,000 home and you will not have reduced the number of people in the military by one.”