Political Quotes

On the recordMay 5, 2010
Mr. President, I read with interest, and disgust, the press reports about the comments of Iranian President Ahmadinejad at the United Nations on Monday, when he attempted to defend Iran's secret nuclear program and his government's continuing defiance of the Security Council. I could not help but contrast his words with the efforts so many other countries have been making to prevent a nuclear weapon from ending up in the hands of a terrorist, or a nuclear arms race from taking off in the Middle East or South Asia. In the past couple of weeks, the United States and Russia--two former enemies that once came to the brink of a nuclear war and since the 1980s have slashed their nuclear arsenals--agreed to make further reductions, and President Obama has said he wants to negotiate deeper cuts in furtherance of his long-term vision of a world without nuclear weapons. On Monday, the Pentagon disclosed publicly the number of weapons that remain in our arsenal, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago. There are serious efforts being made to establish nuclear weapons- free zones in South America, Africa, and the Middle East. And at the United Nations, even countries such as Russia and China, which have traditionally sided with Iran, have all but lost patience with what Secretary Clinton rightly called Iran's ``history of making confusing, contradictory and inaccurate statements.'' Nobody questions Iran's right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.…
Said by
Patrick Leahy
Democratic · Vermont

Share & report

More from Patrick Leahy

May 26, 2022

Mr. President, I have long told the story of my love for Batman comics dating back to my younger years growing up in Montpelier, VT. When I was 4 years old, I would race to the Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier with my latest Batman…

govinfo.gov
May 18, 2022

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object--and I will--I think back over the years to some of the debates. I remember, during the Reagan administration, when we heard so many speeches from President Reagan and his supporters on how…

govinfo.gov
Dec 13, 2022

Madam President, in 1986, when much of Central America was embroiled in armed conflicts in which hundreds of thousands of people, overwhelmingly civilians, were killed, a group of parishioners from the Franconia, NH, Congregational Church…

govinfo.gov
Dec 13, 2022

Madam President, I have spent more than 30 years working to build closer relations with Vietnam, a country where 58,220 Americans and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese died in a war that never should have been fought. In 1975, as the…

govinfo.gov

Other voices in this conversation