Quotations

«All nations that have nuclear weapons think that they are responsible and it is the other guys who are irresponsible.»

«In the Middle East, it is an untenable position for the next decade to maintain that no Arab nation can have a nuclear weapon but Israel can,»

«[While President Bush argues that terrorism, not Russia, is the gravest threat to U.S. security, it was his Administration that thwarted Russia's desire for both sides to destroy the nuclear warheads that are to be taken off alert under the new accord. As long as the U.S. insists on keeping some of those weapons intact to face future threats, Russia is likely to follow suit. That means even more nuclear weapons--retired but still potent--will be crammed into the more than 300 buildings in Russia now holding the Holy Grail of terrorists: atomic warheads or the fissile material critical to building them.] Our greatest danger now isn't that Russia is going to attack the U.S. with nuclear missiles, ... It's that some group is going to get its hands on the growing number of nuclear warheads stored in less-than-secure conditions in Russia.»

«This is the triumph of power politics over non-proliferation.»

«You no longer heard comments about tyrants and pygmies. It may seem to be a small matter, but it's very important diplomatically.»

«If you don't have the president repeatedly telling his staff that he wants this job done, then the natural bureaucratic barriers ally to slow and eventually block progress.... If you were serious about this, if you really thought that the No. 1 threat was a terrorist getting hold of a nuclear weapon and hitting the United States with it ... you would vastly accelerate the effort to eliminate that material before the terrorists could get it.»

«This administration is forced to follow this route because of the failures of Iraq.»

«The country is five to 10 years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs.»

«The Europeans are worried that the U.S. might actually decouple its strategic interest from the European interest, and that's something they want to avoid at all cost,»

«We recommend the formation of a senior blue ribbon commission to examine this in an independent, nonpartisan way and make recommendations for how to insulate intelligence assessors from political pressures,»