[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 13, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1246-S1249]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  STRENGTHENING OUR NATIONAL SECURITY

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I am waiting for one of our associates to 
come. In the meantime, I want to begin some conversation and discussion 
about the topic of the week, which the President has been working on 
certainly, and that is strengthening our national security.
  I suspect most people would agree that the responsibility for defense 
is perhaps the No. 1 responsibility of the Federal Government. It is 
the activity that no other government at any other level can handle. It 
is the thing that, of course, all of us are very aware of. We are 
constantly grateful for the kinds of things that have been done to 
preserve our freedom by the military over the years. For more than 200 
years, the military has been that arm of Government that has preserved 
our freedom. Many people have sacrificed, including the soldiers, 
sailors, and the marines, over the years.
  So as we face the question of defense and the military, that is one 
of the things with which we are obviously most concerned. The President 
has put this as one of his high priorities, and I think properly so. 
Clearly, over the last 8 years, specifically, the military has not been 
supported to meet the kinds of needs they have had.
  I think it is very clear that there are at least two kinds of 
questions to be answered as we go about funding the military. One has 
to do with improving the quality of life for military personnel. The 
other, then, has to do with the idea of examining the structure, 
examining where we are in terms of the military and how it meets 
today's needs and the changing needs that obviously have happened 
around us.
  I think the President has been very wise to commit himself to some 
payments soon to help with the quality of life for the military. I 
think equally as important has been his request for some studies, 
bottom-up analyses, of the military prior to making any substantial 
changes in the way the military is structured, the kinds of weapons 
that are necessary and those things that will deal with that aspect of 
it.
  With regard to quality of life, certainly one of the things that is 
important, obviously, is that the military is built around personnel, 
around the idea that you have men and women willing to serve. We now 
have a voluntary military, of course, so that it has to be made 
somewhat attractive for people to be interested in joining the 
military, so that recruitment can be kept up. Equally as important, of 
course, is after the training that takes place in the military, it is 
necessary to have the kind of arrangement where people can stay there 
once trained, whether it be airplane mechanics, or pilots, or whatever, 
to leave the training and their training goes unused.
  So the President has, I believe yesterday, gone down to Georgia and 
committed himself to some things to improve the lives of our troops--to 
raise military pay, renovate substandard housing, to improve military 
training, and take a look at health care, as well as some deployments 
in which we have been involved.
  The President will announce, as I understand it, about a $5.76 
billion increase, which will include $1.5 billion for military pay, 
which is in the process and should be in the process of causing these 
folks to be able to come a little closer to competition with the 
private sector; about $400 million for improving military housing; and 
almost $4 billion to improve health care for the military.
  I believe these things are very necessary and should happen as 
quickly as possible. I have had the occasion and honor over the last 
month or so to visit a couple military bases, Warren Air Force Base in 
my home State, a missile base in Cheyenne, WY, and Quantico, VA, the 
Marine Corps base close to D.C., here, where I went through training 
for the Marine Corps many years ago. It is an interesting place. In 
both instances, the first priority on these bases was housing, places 
for enlisted NCOs, officers, to live on base.
  As to the housing in both instances, it is interesting. As different 
as these two bases were, and as far as they were apart, the problems in 
housing were very similar. Housing that had been built back in the 
thirties was still being used. It really had gone to the extent that 
rather than being renovated or repaired, it wasn't worth that; it had 
to be destroyed and replaced. Some, of course, could be fixed up. It is 
very difficult, particularly for enlisted with families, No. 1, find a 
place to live, particularly at a place such as Quantico, but more 
importantly to have it economically reasonably attractive for these 
folks. As we move toward this, I hope the President will maintain--and 
I want to comment on this later--his commitment to doing something 
immediately for the personnel, and then to go through this study. I 
think there is a great deal that needs to be done in terms of how the 
military is structured. It is quite different now.

  Obviously, our big problem now is terrorism. There are problems 
around the world in smaller units. We are not talking about ships full 
of divisions of troops with tanks landing somewhere. We are talking 
about something that can move quickly and is available to move and 
sustain itself without logistical support for some time. These are 
things that I think are very important.
  I intend to come back later this morning and talk more about this. In 
the meantime, I yield to the Senator from Arizona.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his interest in 
the subject of national defense. As he noted, this is a week in which 
the President is announcing several initiatives in that regard. One of 
his primary objectives, he said, is to strengthen the military so we 
can meet the challenges of this new century.
  He is beginning, naturally, with the support for the troops, which is 
the right place to begin, but he has also noted there are a lot of 
other challenges. We in the Congress who have been working with this 
over the years appreciate the warnings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 
the immediate past Secretary of Defense who have noted we are going to 
have to spend a lot more on defense in order to bring our defense 
capabilities up to the level where they need to be to deter threats 
around the world.
  One of the threats that has received a lot of attention in recent 
weeks on which I want to focus today is the threat of an attack by an 
adversary delivering a weapon of mass destruction via missile. Of 
course, there are other ways of creating problems for the United 
States. We try to deal with each of these different threats.
  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism of the Judiciary 
Committee, for example, I have worked hard to ensure we can both detect 
and deter terrorism, whether in the form of delivery of a weapon in a 
suitcase that people like to talk about or in the case of an attack 
directly against an installation or U.S. assets, such as the attack on 
the U.S.S. Cole. In all of those situations, we have plans and we have 
made some progress in meeting that threat of terrorism.
  Where we have been lacking is in a commitment to deal with the other 
equally ominous threat of weapons of mass destruction delivery, and 
that is via the intercontinental ballistic missile or a medium-range 
missile. Why would countries all over the globe that mean us no good be 
spending so much money on the development of their missile capability 
and weapons of mass destruction warheads that could be delivered by the 
missiles? And by that, the WMD--the weapons of mass destruction--we are 
speaking of would be biological warheads, chemical warheads, or nuclear 
warheads. Why would

[[Page S1247]]

they be spending so much money if they did not intend to either use 
those missiles against us or threaten to use them?
  Why do we focus on threats?
  As Secretary Rumsfeld has pointed out several times recently, one of 
the advantages of a missile over some other kinds of terrorist acts is 
that they can threaten other countries, for example, to stay out of 
their way as they take aggression against another country, threatening 
that if they bother them, if they try to intercede in what they are 
trying to do, they will launch a missile against them.
  An example is the Saddam Hussein situation in which he goes into 
Kuwait. Had he had missiles with longer range capability and warheads 
that could have delivered weapons of mass destruction, he could have 
easily threatened cities in Europe and made it much more difficult for 
the United States to have put together the coalition that we eventually 
put together to stop him from further aggression and eventually repel 
him from Kuwait.
  It is the threat of the use of these weapons, as much as the weapons 
themselves, that is an instrument of policy.
  Another case that nobody likes to talk about because we do not 
consider China as an enemy of the United States--and it is not--is the 
situation in which, however, China would potentially, with leaders who 
decide they have to take aggressive action against Taiwan, begin 
initiating some form of military threat or action against that island 
and force the United States to choose whether or not to defend Taiwan.
  One of the elements of whether we might do so is whether we would be 
subject to attack by the Chinese if we sought to inhibit their 
aggressive intentions. At least some in the military in China have 
already made it perfectly plain that they have missiles that can reach 
the United States and perhaps we would want to think twice before 
coming to the aid of Taiwan.
  Again, this is not something I project or suspect is going to happen 
anytime soon, but the fact is intercontinental or medium-range missiles 
that can deliver weapons of mass destruction can be used to stop 
countries such as the United States from interfering in hostile 
actions. That is one of the reasons we have to be concerned.
  The other reason, of course, is these weapons can actually be used. 
It is not just the threat of use but the actual use. We know from past 
experience that countries that see no hope in their situation flail 
out, launching these kinds of missiles against their enemies in a last 
desperate attempt to at least prove their point, if not to win the war. 
We know there are some who have indicated they might do this again in 
the future.
  For example, a defeated Nazi Germany fired over 2,400 V-1 and 500 V-2 
rockets at London, causing over 67,000 casualties, including 7,600 
deaths.
  During the Yom Kippur war, Egypt launched Scud missiles at Israel.
  The so-called ``War of the Cities'' during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war 
saw almost 300 Scud missiles exchanged between combatants, with little 
or no anticipation that such actions would facilitate victory.

  In 1986, Libya, in response to U.S. air strikes that were in 
themselves a response to Libyan-sponsored terrorist acts, launched two 
Scud missiles at a U.S. facility in Italy. That they landed harmlessly 
in the Mediterranean Sea does not diminish the significance of the 
event in the context of the use of hostile regimes.
  While we try to deter countries from launching these kinds of 
missiles, we know that sometimes deterrence fails and these missiles 
will be launched. In that case, there is only one thing that is 
sensible, which is to try to have some kind of defense in place to 
protect our citizens or our troops deployed abroad or our allies.
  The sad truth is, unfortunately, the United States today cannot 
defend itself from a hostile missile attack. In fact, we have a very 
hard time defending against even the kinds of missiles launched a 
decade ago in the Persian Gulf war. Remember the single largest number 
of casualties in that war: 28 American soldiers died because of a Scud 
missile attack at our base in Saudi Arabia that we could not stop. Yet 
in the interim, between that event and today, we have made precious 
little progress in fielding a system which can defend against that kind 
of threat.
  I just returned from a trip the weekend before last to Munich, 
Germany, the so-called Veracunda, a conference of primarily NATO 
defense ministers, the Secretary General of NATO, as well as 
representatives of the U.S. Senate and other parliamentarians--
primarily of the NATO countries--to talk about the future of NATO and 
the United States-allies cooperation, among other things, in the 
development of ballistic missile defenses. The U.S. delegation was led 
by my colleagues John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. All of us, including 
Secretary Rumsfeld who was in attendance, made the point to our allies 
that the United States had no option but to move forward with missile 
defense, that our interests were threatened around the world, and that 
we would have to move forward, but that we wanted to consult with our 
allies so, first of all, they would understand what we are doing, why 
we are doing it, and perhaps they would have some participation in how 
it would evolve, at least as to how it impacts them.
  We wanted to make what we did applicable to them as well, to provide 
protection to them if they wanted it. From a previous position of some 
hostility to the idea, because of their concerns about what Russia and 
China might do, I believe our allies are moving more to an acceptance 
of the fact that we are going to proceed and a willingness to confer 
with us on how that system evolves, even in some cases to talk to us 
about how we might integrate it with their own defense to provide 
protection to them as well.

  I believe that momentum, in other words, for acceptance of our 
missile defense system from our allies has definitely picked up. It is 
important that the Senate and House support the President in his 
determination to move forward with our missile defense. In this regard, 
it will be very important for the administration to move very quickly 
to make it clear that the momentum has not slowed, that we do intend to 
move forward, and we are not going to let another season go by without 
beginning the deployment of assets that we can deploy.
  There are very promising technologies. I will be taking the floor at 
later times to talk about how these might evolve. I start with the sea-
based systems. It was clear that the Clinton administration wanted to 
have only one system. That system, built in Alaska, would have been 
very vulnerable. The radar that would have been constructed at Chiniak 
Island could be useful to us with respect to future systems that we 
deploy.
  I think it would be a mistake to assume that is the be all and end 
all of our national missile defense system. Much more productive would 
be the use of existing assets, the standard missiles we have aboard 
Aegis cruisers and use the radars we would have constructed at Chiniak 
Island and the onboard radars, to take literally anywhere in the world 
to provide defense in theater, both against threats that are medium-
range threats today and in the not-too-distant future, to be able to 
actually provide some strategic defense to protect the United States, 
or most of it.
  As I say, this technology is probably the most advanced but it will 
be up to the Congress to add money to the defense budget and up to the 
administration to do the planning to integrate that funding into the 
testing program, the development program, and the fairly early 
deployment of that limited kind of missile defense program.
  At the same time, we should be pursuing the existing plans with 
respect to land-based systems because I suspect that at the end of the 
day we are going to want to have layered systems where we have sea-
based components and land-based components and the radars that 
facilitate the effectiveness of each. These will be details of plans 
emerging through the administration review, recommendations of the 
Department of Defense, and the funding that will be required to come 
from the Congress. Again, I will get into more detail on that later.
  The point I make this morning is we are beginning the conversations 
with our allies that should have taken place years ago. This 
administration is committed to that. I am convinced, because of the 
fine statement that Secretary Rumsfeld made at the Munich

[[Page S1248]]

conference, that our allies are now going to be willing to work with us 
and will be supportive of us at the end of the day. It will be up to us 
to follow through with the support that only the Congress can provide.
  Let me conclude by going back to the point with which I started. 
There are basically two reasons to have defense. The first is to deter 
action by would-be aggressors, and you deter not only the use of 
missiles but also the threat of their use, because the threat of their 
use is frequently the foreign policy tool of these rogue nations, to 
keep you out of their way while they engage in their nefarious 
activities. So you deter the threat and you also deter the actual use.
  But the second reason is in the event deterrence fails to actually 
defend yourself--in some cases we know that, especially with regard to 
these rogue nations which can have very irrational leaders, deterrence 
does not work--and the missiles do get launched. If you don't have a 
way of defending yourself, you will suffer extraordinarily large 
casualties.

  It would be immoral for leaders of the United States today --and this 
is a point Secretary Rumsfeld made over and over--it would be immoral 
for the President, for the Secretary of Defense, and those in the 
Congress not to do everything we can to facilitate the deployment of 
these defenses on our watch.
  If American citizens are killed because we failed in that duty, we 
have no one to blame but ourselves because the technology is at hand, 
we have the financial capability of doing it, there is no longer any 
question about the threat, and we can work with our allies. All that is 
left is the will to move forward to do this.
  The final point I wish to make is this: There are those who say we 
already have a deterrence; it is our nuclear deterrence; and no one 
would dare mess with the United States because of that.
  There are two problems with that. The first is that we need an option 
to annihilating millions of people on the globe. If our only reaction 
to an attack against us is to respond in kind--in fact, more than in 
kind--and annihilate, incinerate, literally, millions of people, most 
of whom are totally innocent and are simply in a country led by some 
kind of irrational rogue dictator--if that is our only response, it is 
an immoral response when we have an alternative, and that is a defense 
that can protect the United States and deter that aggression in the 
first place.
  Secondly, it is much more effective to have this additional response, 
because at the end of the day there gets to be a point where people 
wonder whether that nuclear deterrent is even credible. It is certainly 
credible against a massive nuclear attack against the United States, 
but is it credible against a limited attack by some irrational 
dictator, against the United States or our allies, that we would, then, 
in turn, annihilate all of the citizens of his country? That is 
something we have never been able to answer and we don't want to answer 
because we want to leave out there the notion that we might respond 
with that kind of nuclear deterrent, but it becomes less and less 
likely as time goes on.
  That is why we need this alternative--another option, a moral option, 
the option of defense--not just the option of massive nuclear 
retaliation.
  Mr. President, I appreciate this opportunity to address the Senate 
today on the threat to the United States from the proliferation of 
ballistic missile technology and the debate on deployment of a national 
missile defense system.
  I recently had the pleasure, Mr. President, of attending the annual 
Conference on Security Policy in Munich, Germany. This conference, for 
those unfamiliar with it, is a gathering of U.S., European and Asian 
foreign and defense ministers, miscellaneous civilian defense experts, 
and prominent members of the media. Senators McCain and Lieberman led 
the U.S. delegation. Of particular note, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld 
utilized the conference to make his first major address in his capacity 
as head of the nation's military establishment. The main topic of 
Secretary Rumsfeld's address, not surprisingly, was the Bush 
Administration's intention to proceed with deployment of a National 
Missile Defense system, in consultation with our NATO allies.
  The Munich Conference, as has been evident in the plethora of news 
stories that have appeared since, illustrated the scale of opposition 
among our allies as well as among countries like Russia and China. 
Fears of precipitating an arms race with Russia and China while driving 
an irreparable wedge between the United States and Europe were 
palpable. They were, however, equally misplaced.
  Few issues within the realm of national security affairs have been as 
divisive and prone to alarmist hyperbole than the development of 
ballistic missile defenses. It really is, in a sense, almost 
surrealistic to contemplate a country that will spend hundreds of 
billions of dollars per year on national defense while conceding to its 
adversaries the freedom to destroy our cities if only they develop 
long-range ballistic missiles. And in anticipating the usual rejoinder 
that our military superiority will surely deter such adversaries from 
launching nuclear-armed missiles in our direction, let us focus a 
minute to two on the history of warfare in the missile age. It really 
is quite illuminating.
  Deterrence, Mr. President, is a concept. An adversary or potential 
adversary will refrain from taking an action or actions detrimental to 
our national interest if it fears a debilitating retaliatory attack. 
The history of man, however, is the history of war, and the history of 
war is the history of deterrence--and diplomacy--failing. A nation at 
war will rarely refrain from employing those means at its disposal, 
especially when regime survival is at stake. Moreover, and of 
particular relevance to discussions of missile defenses, is the 
tendency of defeated regimes to strike out irrationally. A defeated 
Nazi German fired over 2,400 V-1 and 500 V-2 rockets at London, causing 
over 67,000 casualties, including 7,600 deaths. During the 1973 Yom 
Kippur War, Egypt launched Scud missiles at Israel. The so-called ``War 
of the Cities'' during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War saw almost 300 Scud 
missiles exchanged between combatants with little or no anticipation 
that such actions would facilitate victory. In April 1986, Libya, in 
response to U.S. air strikes that were in themselves a response to 
Libyan-sponsored terrorist acts, launched two Scud missiles at a U.S. 
facility in Italy. That they landed harmlessly in the Mediterranean 
does not diminish the significance of the event in the context of the 
use of missiles by hostile regimes.
  While deterrence should remain a fundamental tenet of our national 
security strategy, it is not enough. Clearly, we cannot assume, nor 
base the security of our population, on our own estimations of the 
calculations occurring in the minds of hostile dictators, especially 
during periods of heightened tensions. The historical record should be 
sufficient to convince all of us that missile proliferation is a 
serious problem--certainly, on that, we all agree--and that those 
missiles can and may be used, either in the throes of defeat or as the 
result of a failed attempt to deter the United States from acting in 
defense of our vital national interests in regions like the Middle and 
Far East. The recent publication of the book ``Saddam's Bombmaker,'' 
written by the former chief engineer of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, 
includes a passage suggesting, based upon the author's personal 
observations of Saddam Hussein, that the Iraqi dictator fully intends 
to launch nuclear-armed missiles against Israel in the event he becomes 
convinced that his personal demise is inevitable. Should he attain the 
capability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, I think it 
is no stretch of the imagination to add the United States to that list.

  The case of Iran is equally worrisome. Last Fall, we undertook a 
rather impromptu debate on the nature of Russian-Iranian relations when 
the New York Times ran a series of articles detailing possible 
violations of the Iran-Iraq Nonproliferation Act and the subsequent 
1996 amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, which sought clearly to 
sanction foreign entities determined to be transferring destabilizing 
military equipment and technology to Iran and Iraq. The debate that 
emerged focused, of course, given

[[Page S1249]]

the text of the law, on conventional arms transfers from Russia to 
Iran. Something of a given, as far as the Clinton administration's 
posture was concerned, with that the Russian-Iranian military 
relationship had been largely contained courtesy of the former vice 
president's diplomatic skills.
  Putting aside the subsequent abrogation of the secret Gore-
Chernomyrdin Pact and the emergence of a more open and vibrant 
conventional arms trade between Russia and Iran, the issue of missile 
and nuclear-technology transfers was clearly presumed to be under 
control. But all available information points to the contrary. More 
disturbing, the relationship is unquestionably at the government-to-
government level. The Clinton administration's arguments that 
individual Russian entities were circumventing good-faith Russian 
efforts at stemming the flow of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, 
the basis of its veto of the Iran Nonproliferation Act, were wholly 
without merit. In defense of this relationship, Russia's most prominent 
defense analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, was recently quoted as stating, 
``We are brothers-in-arms, and have long-term interests together.'' And 
Defense Minister Sergeyev's December 2000 visit to Iran to conclude the 
new arms agreement was trumpeted by Sergeyev as ushering in a ``new 
phase of military and technical cooperation.''
  A recent CIA report act on foreign assistance to Iran's weapons of 
mass destruction, missile and advanced conventional weapons programs, 
submitted pursuant to the requirements of the fiscal year 2001 
intelligence authorization act, includes the following:

       Cooperation between Iran's ballistic missile program and 
     Russian aerospace entities has been a matter of increasing 
     proliferation concern through the second half of the 1900s. 
     Iran continues to acquire Russian technology which could 
     significantly accelerate the pace of Iran's ballistic missile 
     development program. Assistance by Russian entities has 
     helped Iran save years in its development of the Shahab-3, a 
     1,300-kilometer-range MRBM * * * Russian assistance is 
     playing a crucial role in Iran's ability to develop more 
     sophisticated and longer-range missiles. Russian entities 
     have helped the Iranian missile effort in areas ranging from 
     training, to testing, to components. Similarly, Iran's 
     missile program has acquired a broad range of assistance from 
     an array of Russian entities of many sizes and many areas of 
     specialization.

  Similarly, the Department of Defense's January 2001 report, 
Proliferation: Threat and Response, states with respect to Russian-Iran 
nuclear cooperation, that

       Although [the Iranian nuclear complex] Bushehr [which is 
     receiving substantial Russian assistance] will fall under 
     IAEA safeguards, Iran is using this project to seek access to 
     more sensitive nuclear technologies from Russia and to 
     develop expertise in related nuclear technologies. Any such 
     projects will help Iran augment its nuclear technology 
     infrastructure, which in turn would be useful in supporting 
     nuclear weapons research and development.

  Finally, and not to belabor the point, the Director of Central 
Intelligence George Tenet recently testified before the Intelligence 
Committee that Russian entities ``last year continued to supply a 
variety of ballistic missile-related goods and technical know-how to 
countries such as Iran, India, China, and Libya.'' Indeed, Director 
Tenet emphasized this point several times in his testimony, stating, 
``the transfer of ballistic missile technology from Russia to Iran was 
substantial last year, and in our judgment will continue to accelerate 
Iranian efforts to develop new missiles and to become self-sufficient 
in production.''
  The significance of this relationship is considerable. Opponents of 
missile defenses have argued both during and after the cold war that 
the dynamics of warning and response have changed; that we will have 
sufficient strategic warning of serious threats to our national 
security to take the necessary measures in response. The entire basis 
of the Rumsfeld Commission report, and of much of DCI Tenet's 
testimony, on the threat from foreign missile programs, however, is 
that strategic--and, indeed, tactical--warning can be severely 
diminished in the event suspect countries succeed in attaining large-
scale technical assistance or complete ballistic missiles, which Saudi 
Arabia accomplished by its purchase of Chinese CSS-2 medium-range 
ballistic missiles and Pakistan did in the case of the Chinese M-11 
missile transfer. That is clearly the case with Iran.
  The impact on U.S. national security policy of the proliferation of 
ballistic and cruise missile technology, as well as of so-called 
weapons of mass destruction, should not be underestimated. Presidents 
of either party and their military commanders will undergo a 
fundamental transformation in their approach to foreign policy 
commitments and the requirement to project military power in defense of 
our allies and vital interests if they possess the knowledge that 
American forces and cities are vulnerable to missile strikes. We have 
pondered the scenario wherein our response to an invasion of Kuwait by 
a nuclear-armed Iraq would have been met with the response the 1990 
invasion precipitated. Similarly, the oft-cited threat against the 
United States by Chinese officials in the event we come to the defense 
of Taiwan should be cause for sober reflection--although the commitment 
to Taiwan's security should be equally absolute. The point, Mr. 
President, is that the development or acquisition by rogue regimes of 
long-range ballistic missiles will alter our response to crises in an 
adverse manner. Secretary Rumsfeld summed up the situation well in his 
speech in Munich when he stated, ``Terror weapons don't need to be 
fired. They just need to be in the hands of people who would threaten 
their use.''
  The need for continued development and deployment of systems to 
defend against ballistic missile attack is real. We lost eight precious 
years during which the previous administration stood steadfast in 
opposition to its most fundamental requirement to provide for the 
common defense. No where in the Constitution is there a qualification 
from that responsibility for certain types of threats to the American 
population, and I doubt one would have been contemplated. The Founding 
Fathers were unlikely, I believe, to have supported a policy wherein 
the United States would defend itself against most threats, but 
deliberately leave itself vulnerable to the most dangerous.

  We can research missile defenses in perpetuity and not attain the 
level of perfection some demand. We can, however, deploy viable systems 
to the field intent on improving them over time as new technologies are 
developed. We do it with ships, tanks, and fighter aircraft. The value 
of having fielded systems both as testbeds and for that measure of 
protection they will provide, while incorporating improvements as they 
emerge, is the only path available to us if we are serious about 
defending our cities against ballistic missile attack.
  Yes, I know that a multibillion dollar missile defense system will 
not protect against the suitcase bomb smuggled in via cargo ship. But 
let us not pretend that we are not talking actions to defend against 
that contingency as well. Arguments that posit one threat against 
another in that manner are entirely specious. As I've noted, the 
history of the missile age is not of static displays developed at great 
expense for the purpose of idol worship. It is of weaponry intended to 
deter other countries from acting, and to be used when militarily 
necessary or psychologically expedient. We can't wish them away, and 
the fact of proliferation is indisputable. The deployment of a National 
Missile Defense system is the most important step we can take to 
protect the people we are here to represent. They expect nothing less.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Iowa.

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