Political Quotes

“while I disagree with the thesis of our distinguished colleague, the Senator from Oregon, I do respect his views on it. I wonder if I might engage him in a brief colloquy. This doctrine of preemptive attack unilaterally, clearly the Senator knows the President is diligently working with the United Nations, with the Secretary of State--the Secretary of State visited here with a group of us at midday today and held a press conference, and he indicated progress is being made. For the moment, we have to accord the administration at least clear support for trying hard to gain a coalition of nations and a new resolution in the Security Council which hopefully will be much stronger than anything we have seen before, and could act as a deterrent to the use of hostilities for a period of time, and hopefully, who knows, the regime may have a change of heart and cooperate. Cooperation is a keystone to any successful inspection regime. But back to the preemptive--and I have shared this with others--in my research, the United States, under a number of Presidents, has directed military action in the following: Panama in 1901; Dominican Republic in 1904, 1914, 1965; Honduras, 1912; Nicaragua, 1926; Lebanon, 1958; Cuba, the naval quarantine, 1962, President Kennedy--clearly that was a preemptive threat and action by our President--Grenada, 1983; Libya, 1986; Panama, that was just cause in 1989; Somalia in 1992; Sudan, Afghanistan, August of 1998.…”