[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 17, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S7924]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have been presiding, and I know that we 
are going to be continuing with the defense appropriations bill later 
on. I noticed something that I read just in the last couple days that 
was in the Wall Street Journal under the title of ``Do We Need a 
Missile Defense?'' This has been a debate in this body for quite some 
time during the Defense authorization bill. It is so obvious on its 
face, that virtually every strategist, in terms of strategic defense in 
the country, agrees that we are under probably a greater threat today 
than we have been maybe in the history of this country in that we no 
longer are in a cold-war posture where there are two superpowers and 
you can identify who the other one is, as it was in the case of the 
cold war.
  Some of us, I think, may be looking back wistfully at the days when 
there was a cold war and we could identify who the enemy was. I can 
recall that back during the Nixon administration, Richard Nixon and Dr. 
Kissinger put together the whole concept of the ABM Treaty, which was 
there are only two superpowers that have weapons of mass destruction 
and the missile means to deliver them, at least part way. Therefore, if 
we all agree not to defend ourselves, then the philosophy of mutual 
assured destruction would serve us all well. In other words, the 
Soviets fire at us, we fire at them, everybody dies and no one is 
happy.
  That is not the situation today. I did not agree with it back in 
1972. Back when we had the ratification of the START II agreement, I 
was the only Senator halfway through the rollcall to vote against it. 
Everyone else was voting for it until a few others realized that what 
we were doing is going back and reinstating or resurrecting that 
philosophy of the ABM Treaty, except now it would be with Russia as 
opposed to the Soviet Union since it no longer exists.

  I think it is insane that we would even consider something like that. 
In fact, I had permission from Henry Kissinger himself to stand on the 
Senate floor and quote him when he said that he did agree at the time 
that that was a good policy for America in 1972, but he said that now 
some 25 nations have weapons of mass destruction, and he said, ``It is 
nuts to make a virtue out of our vulnerability.''
  This article that I read--I will, without exceeding my time, just 
paraphrase a few of the comments here by some of the experts. Donald 
Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense during the Ford administration. 
He said:

       Only someone deep in denial can contend that the U.S. 
     cannot be threatened by ballistic missiles. Rogue states like 
     Iran, Iraq and North Korea have made clear their 
     determination to acquire chemical, biological or nuclear 
     weapons and the missiles to deliver them. China and Russia, 
     if inclined, could threaten many countries, near and far, 
     with nuclear missiles. Missiles are a weapon of choice for 
     intimidation, precisely because the world knows that once a 
     missile is launched, the U.S. is not capable of stopping it.

  Henry F. Cooper was the director of the Strategic Defense Initiative 
during the Bush administration and the chief U.S. negotiator in the 
Geneva defense and space talks during the Reagan administration. He 
said--I will just quote this first sentence:

       America's vulnerability to ballistic missile attack is a 
     leadership failure of potentially disastrous proportions.

  Then it goes on to quote many others, including James Woolsey, who 
was President Clinton's former Director of the Central Intelligence 
Agency and now practices law in Washington. He was the one who 2 years 
ago said that--this was 2 years ago--we now have 22, 25 nations that 
have weapons of mass destruction or are in the final stages of 
completing those weapons and are working on the missile means of 
deploying them, delivering them.
  I think, Mr. President, if you update his statement, as he did the 
other day, it is now up to some 30 nations. Look at who these nations 
are. When you are dealing with the Middle East mentality of Iran, Iraq, 
and Syria and Lebanon and Libya, and, of course, people like Saddam 
Hussein, who would murder his own grandchildren, we are not dealing 
with people that we can predict, people who think like Westerners 
think. Yet here we are today considering the defense appropriations 
bill and giving virtually no attention to our ability to defend 
ourselves with a national missile defense system.
  So, Mr. President, I am hoping, as we keep repeating this over and 
over again, that we can penetrate somehow this Eastern media who would 
like to make people believe that the threat is not out there, this 
administration that keeps saying over and over again that it will be 15 
years before we can be threatened by a missile attack, when in fact 
there are intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the United 
States from as far away as China or Russia.
  We have been held hostage. We were held hostage in the Taiwan Strait 
when the Chinese went over and were doing their missile 
experimentation. One of the highest ranking Chinese officials at that 
time said, ``We're not concerned about the Americans coming in and 
defending Taipei because they would rather defend Los Angeles than they 
would Taipei.'' That has to be at least an indirect threat at the 
United States.
  The threat is real. The danger is real. We are living in a time when 
the threat is greater than it has been at any time in this country's 
history. We, as a body, are trying to do something about it against the 
wishes of the administration, and we have to prevail in this effort for 
our kids' sake.
  Lastly, I am from Oklahoma, and those who saw the Murrah Federal 
Office Building and saw the television accounts of it--you almost had 
to be there to get the full impact of the tragedy that was there. It 
was just indescribable. The power of that bomb that blew up the Murrah 
Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City was equal to 1 ton of TNT. The 
smallest nuclear warhead known to man is 1 kiloton, 1,000 times the 
explosive power. So the threat is there, Mr. President. We need to deal 
with that and do something about it. After all, is that not what 
Government is for? I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Utah is recognized.

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