Ron Kind: “It is interesting. The President is abroad right now in Europe trying to sell at least partly on this trip the merits of…”

“It is interesting. The President is abroad right now in Europe trying to sell at least partly on this trip the merits of his missile defense program. It was interesting to read some comments from some of the military experts within France who kind of chuckled at the thought. They are not obviously enthusiastic supporters of the program. They said, well, we kind of tried that, too, after the First World War. It was called the Maginot Line, trying to deal with a perceived threat. Obviously we saw how well that worked during the Second World War. Once the enemy saw what type of defense system was deployed, they figured out a way to get around it. That is the concern really for a lot of our allies, our European allies whom we are going to have to rely on and work with in order to bring greater stability across the globe. That I think is a very, very important issue. I think all of us here in the House have seen the defense reviews from CIA, from the Defense Department, ranking the real threats that we face today, from the greatest threats to the least threat. Missile defense, a launch of a nuclear missile basically airmailed to us because we will know exactly where it was launched from and who sent it, is one of the least likely threats we face right now in our national security basket.”