02 May 2001

Excerpts: Rep. Weldon Outlines Rationale for Missile Defense

America is "totally vulnerable" to a missile attack, according to Representative Curt Weldon (Republican of Pennsylvania).

"If an accidental launch occurred of one missile from Russia, from North Korea, which we know now has the long-range capability, or from China, we have no capability to respond," Weldon said in a May 2 speech in the House of Representatives.

"Working together for peaceful protection of our friends, our allies and our neighbors, is the solution of the 21st century. That is what George Bush outlined for us yesterday" in his missile defense plan, said Weldon, a member of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China.

The President "is on the right track," Weldon said. "He did not say we have all the answers, because we do not, but he did say, together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish."

Weldon, who is chairman of the House subcommittee on Military Readiness, said that the United States is pursuing a missile defense system much like the one Russia already has.

"The first reason we need missile defense is to protect us against an accidental or deliberate launch," said Weldon, the founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus.

Weldon reminded his colleagues that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has documented that North Korea test-launched a three-stage Taepo Dong II rocket in August of 1998.

"It did not complete its line of flight, but the CIA estimated if it had, it would have been able to reach American soil, the West Coast of California, parts of Alaska and parts of Hawaii," Weldon said.

The missile defense system proposed by President Bush is one that would only "give us the ability to defend against a small number of missiles, an accidental launch or a deliberate launch of perhaps 1 to 10 missiles, that we could defend against," he said.

Such a system, Weldon added, "does not destabilize our relationship with Russia because Russia knows full well that they could launch hundreds of missiles at America and very easily overcome the kind of system that President Bush is talking about."

President Bush has proposed a new dynamic, the Pennsylvania lawmaker said.

"I call it asymmetric deterrence, and that means that we continue to negotiate with our allies and friends and countries like Russia, and we continue to rely on deterrence as the ultimate threat to an attack on our homeland, but we now begin to allow missile defense systems," said Weldon, a member of the Republican Policy Committee.

"The fact is that Russia believes in missile defense, as does America. They believe in deterrence, as does America. The Soviet Union developed the only operational ABM system around Moscow. That system has been upgraded four times, and it still exists today," said Weldon, who is the founder and chairman of the Congressional U.S.-Former Soviet Union Energy Caucus.

"When I travel to Moscow and meet with my Russian friends and we talk about missile defense, I candidly ask them, If you really believe in deterrence alone, take down your ABM system. Be as vulnerable as America is, and have no system and rely on deterrence," he related.

"They look at me and smile and laugh and say, 'You know we will never do that,'" Weldon said.

The Russians "believe in missile defense," Weldon said. "They have aggressive and very capable theater missile defense systems. They have the SA-10, the SA-12, the S-300, the S-400."

In fact, he continued, "Russia's systems are comparable to systems that we are building. So it is not a case of America pursuing missile defense and embarrassing Russia because they do not have any systems; they have some of the best systems in the world available today."

Weldon, who also sits on the House Science Committee, said he was convinced that Russia's leaders "can and will understand that America's intent on missile defense is not to create an arms race."

"The Russians believe in missile defense because they know the threats are real," Weldon said.

"We believe in missile defense because the threats are real," he said.

Following are excerpts of Weldon's May 2 speech from the Congressional Record:

(begin excerpts)

Defense of America's Homeland
House of Representatives
May 02, 2001

Mr. Weldon of Pennsylvania: Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to focus on an issue that is dominating the front page of every newspaper in America today and that is the defense of America's homeland. President Bush gave a major speech yesterday where he outlined a commitment to pursuit of a national missile defense and provide a protection for this Nation....

I will talk about the objections that are being raised by some; why we need this kind of capability; what the current system capability is that we are developing. And I am going to respond to criticisms that this will start a new arms race....

Madam Speaker, my real topic tonight is to focus on the missile defense speech that President Bush presented yesterday at the National Defense University. He said that we need to change the basic parameters which we live under and deal with in our relations with Russia and other countries relative to the ABM Treaty. The ABM Treaty, which was negotiated in 1972, allows both the United States and the former Soviet Union to rely on deterrence so that neither country would attack the other for fear of retaliation.

In addition, that treaty says that each country can have one missile defense system, one ABM system. The Russians chose to deploy such a system around Moscow, which protects about 75 percent of their population. America chose not to pursue any system, because it was politically impossible in America to choose one city over another and leave the rest of America vulnerable.

Today, Madam Speaker, America is totally vulnerable. If an accidental launch occurred of one missile from Russia, from North Korea, which we know now has the long-range capability, or from China, we have no capability to respond.

Now, is that such a far-fetched idea or notion?

Well, Madam Speaker, let me document for our colleagues what occurred in January of 1995. As we know, the Russians have hundreds of missile launchers, all of which can reach any city in America within 25 minutes, and all of which have nuclear warheads on top of them.

Now, there is a very sophisticated command and control system on those missiles, as there are on our missiles; but a significant number of Russia's missiles are on mobile launchers. They are called SS-25s. If my colleagues saw a photograph of one, it would look like it is on the back of a tractor-trailer truck. But that missile, even though it can be transported any place over an open road area, can travel the necessary distance to hit any city in America and devastate that city. Each of those SS-25s are controlled locally, even though they have to have the command authorization of the central Russian Government.

Let us look at what happened in January of 1995. Norway was going to launch a rocket into the atmosphere to sample weather conditions. So Norway contacted Russia and told the Russian Government not to worry when we launch this three-stage rocket; it is simply for us to gather more information about weather conditions affecting our country. Now, because Russia's military has been in a state of disarray, they have not been able to invest and reinvest in improving their conventional alert systems and their intelligence collection systems. So that when Norway launched that three-stage rocket, the Russian intelligence agencies misread it as an attack from an American nuclear submarine.

Boris Yeltsin acknowledged the week after that incident that Russia had, in fact, for one of only three times that we know of, put their entire offensive ICBM system on alert, which meant, Madam Speaker, that Russia was within 15 minutes of launching an ICBM with a nuclear warhead against an American city.... With 7 minutes, left Boris Yeltsin overruled them and called off the response against an American city.

Now, Madam Speaker, for just one moment let us imagine that one of those missiles is accidentally launched, which are preprogrammed to hit a certain spot in America, and all of their missiles are preprogrammed, as ours are preprogrammed. What if that occurred and what if President Putin then realized Russia had made a grave mistake; that they accidentally allowed, either because of a lack of control of a command unit, who may have gotten the launch codes, or because of some other glitch, Russia accidentally launched one missile against America? What would the phone conversation be like between President Putin and President Bush?

Well, it might go something like this: "President Bush, I am sorry to tell you we have made a tragic mistake. We have accidentally launched a missile against one of your cities. We did not mean to do it, but our command and control system failed." What would be President Bush's response? Would he then call a national press conference and tell the people of that target city that they have 25 minutes to move? Because, Madam Speaker, we have no defense today against a ballistic missile launch against America. We have no defense system in place.

For the past 6 years, Madam Speaker, I have chaired the research and development committee for national security. I have been on the security committee for 15 years. So I work these issues. The possibility of an accidental launch is not very high, but it does exist.

And the fact is that today America has no defense against such a launch. There is no system we can put into space, there is no plane we can send up that can shoot down an incoming ICBM at the speed it would be traveling.

The same thing occurred in 1991 when in Desert Storm Saddam Hussein decided that he wanted to harm American soldiers. He could have put a bomb on a truck, and he could have had it driven into Saudi Arabia where our troops were headquartered. But he did not do that. Saddam Hussein chose the weapon of choice, a low-complexity Scud missile with a conventional bomb on top of it and fired that missile into an American barracks in Saudi Arabia. We could not defend against that missile, much like we cannot defend against a missile that would be launched against an American city.

As a result of the launch of that Scud missile by Saddam Hussein, 28 Americans came home in body bags because we let them down. America had no system in place to defend against that kind of a missile attack, even in a small area the distance between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The sad part, Madam Speaker, is that 9, 10 years later we still do not have a highly effective system for missile defense to protect our troops and allies and our Nation....

So the first reason we need missile defense is to protect us against an accidental or deliberate launch. The CIA has now documented that North Korea, an unstable nation, in August of 1998 test-launched a three-stage Taepo Dong II rocket that traversed into the atmosphere. It did not complete its line of flight, but the CIA estimated if it had, it would have been able to reach American soil, the West Coast of California, parts of Alaska and parts of Hawaii.

That allowed the CIA to say publicly that North Korea has the ability to launch from its soil a long-range, three-stage missile that could deliver a light payload against an American city. That missile might not be very accurate, they might aim for Los Angeles and hit San Francisco, but if you are a resident of San Francisco, it does not matter where they aimed.

The point is, North Korea has a capability that they never had. Unlike when the ABM Treaty was developed, you only had two major countries with this kind of ability, the Soviet Union and the United States, and we could respectfully agree that neither would attempt to attack the other for fear of retaliation. Also, when the Soviet Union was in fact a coherent country prior to 1992 before the breakup, the Soviet military was well-paid and well-fed. They had discipline. They were well-respected in Russia. Today, there are severe internal problems and stability problems within the Russian military.

Therefore, because of those problems, there is a greater likelihood of a problem potentially occurring, as there is with the possibility of North Korea or China threatening a launch against the U.S.

Madam Speaker, it is not just whether or not they would launch a missile against us, because the opponents of missile defense will say, wait a minute. Does anybody really believe that North Korea is going to fire a missile against the United States? We would wipe them out. We would wipe China out. That is not the issue, Madam Speaker.

The problem is that we now know North Korea has the capability. We also know that North Korea is developing a nuclear weapon, if they do not already have one, which could be placed on a missile.

Let us take a scenario for a moment. Let us suppose that North Korea would invade South Korea, which they have talked about off and on for years. The U.S. would, because of our relationship, probably come to the aid of South Korea. And what if North Korea's leadership then, and they have certainly indicated unstable decision-making processes in the past, suppose they said to America, If you do not pull your troops out of South Korea, we are going to launch our long-range missile at one of your cities.

Now, unlike in the past, we know North Korea has that kind of very rudimentary capability. Do we then attack North Korea preemptively? Do we wipe out any capability they might have? Do we bomb their cities?

Madam Speaker, we cannot allow a rogue state to have the potential for causing problems in the decision-making process of our President and command officers because of the potential for a launch, illogical launch as it might be, against our sovereign Nation or our allies.

The idea of a missile defense system under George Bush is not what Ronald Reagan proposed, and there will be some in this country who say, there goes George Bush trying to restart the Cold War, trying to bring back Star Wars, or the Strategic Defense Initiative. That is not what President Bush was talking about yesterday. No one is proposing that we attempt to build a shield over America that could stop Russia if they wanted to attack us with all of their missiles.... We are only talking about a limited capability, a system that would give us the ability to defend against a small number of missiles, an accidental launch or a deliberate launch of perhaps 1 to 10 missiles, that we could defend against. This does not destabilize our relationship with Russia because Russia knows full well that they could launch hundreds of missiles at America and very easily overcome the kind of system that President Bush is talking about.

For these reasons, Madam Speaker, it is important that America provide a defense for our people.

The interesting thing is that some of the opponents of missile defense have consistently opposed all research in this area. And I would say to our colleagues, as I did several years ago when we voted on H.R. 4, my missile defense bill in the House, and we pulled more Democrats with us than President Clinton did, 103 Democrats voted in favor of H.R. 4, 102 Democrats voted against it and all but two Republicans voted in favor of that bill, giving us a veto-proof margin. Our goal is to give us the capability that every nation in the world is now pursuing....

We do want to cooperate with our allies. This is not just about protecting America....

The goal that President Bush laid out for the world is that we need to change the dimension. It should no longer be a policy of mutually assured destruction.

Now, to me as a teacher, it is outrageous that we would base our foreign policy with Russia on mutually assured destruction. You attack us, we will annihilate you. We attack you, you will annihilate us. That is a crazy way to have a world order, especially when you have other nations that are not in any way, shape or form anywhere near as reliable as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, and we did not have the instability that we now have inside of Russia with the problems, internal with their military and the command and control and alerting problems that they have in reading what is happening in terms of rocket launches around the world.

So for all of these reasons, President Bush has proposed a new dynamic. I call it asymmetric deterrence, and that means that we continue to negotiate with our allies and friends and countries like Russia, and we continue to rely on deterrence as the ultimate threat to an attack on our homeland, but we now begin to allow missile defense systems.

Now, the question is, why would America pursue missile defense, it is only going to back Russia into a corner. That is not true. The fact is that Russia believes in missile defense, as does America. They believe in deterrence, as does America. The Soviet Union developed the only operational ABM system around Moscow. That system has been upgraded four times, and it still exists today.

When I have been in negotiations with my Russia friends, and I have gone to Russia 23 teams, I speak the language, I formed and I chair the Interparliamentary Commission with the Russia Duma and the Federation Council. When I travel to Moscow and meet with my Russian friends and we talk about missile defense, I candidly ask them, If you really believe in deterrence alone, take down your ABM system. Be as vulnerable as America is, and have no system and rely on deterrence.

They look at me and smile and laugh and say, You know we will never do that.

The point is that the Russians believe in missile defense. They have aggressive and very capable theater missile defense systems. They have the SA-10, the SA-12, the S-300, the S-400....

In fact, Russia's systems are comparable to systems that we are building. So it is not a case of America pursuing missile defense and embarrassing Russia because they do not have any systems; they have some of the best systems in the world available today.

Why then, Madam Speaker, would Russia not trust us? Why then would the Russian leader publicly express his concerns about the President's speech? Why would Russian leaders and European leaders express concern about moving forward with missile defense?

Let me say this, Madam Speaker. If I were a Russian today and if I had witnessed what the Clinton administration did in terms of cooperation with Russia, I would not trust America in the area of missile defense either.

Let me give you the reasons why I say that, Madam Speaker. We have sent mixed signals to Russia for the past 10 years. The first one came in 1993. In 1992, Boris Yeltsin challenged George Bush, Sr. to work together on missile defense, to have Russian scientists and American scientists cooperate and explore ways that we could work together. George Bush, Sr. accepted that challenge. The two Presidents of the two countries involved the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia with the State Department in the U.S....

In 1993, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore came into office, they had opposed missile defense. Without consulting with the Russian government, they abruptly canceled the Ross-Mamedov talks. We sent the first signal to the Russians that we do not want to cooperate with you on missile defense. We do not want to be your partner in looking at ways to change the dynamic of our relationship.

The second signal was sent to the Russians in 1996 and 1997. We had in fact funded one joint program between our Defense Department and the Russian defense department in the missile defense area called Ramos. Ramos was designed to build two satellites, one controlled by Russia, one controlled by the U.S., identical in operation, so that each country would get the same identical information when a rocket was launched someplace on the surface of the Earth, so we would have the same alert mechanism. It also was designed to build trust between our countries in the area of missile defense.... In 1996 and 1997 with no advance notice to the Russians nor to the Congress, the Clinton administration decided to cancel the Ramos program. When the Russians found out about this, they were livid. I got three phone calls and faxes and e-mails at my office from senior Russian leaders....

I then went over to the Senate and enlisted the support of Democrat Senator Carl LEVIN who agreed with me as the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. He and I worked vigilantly with our colleagues, and we overturned the administration's decision. The program is still funded today. But the damage was done. Because for the second time, the Clinton administration told the Russians, "We do not want to cooperate with you."

The third time occurred in 1997. At a time when most people in the world and in this country were acknowledging that the ABM treaty had outlived its usefulness because we were no longer in a bipolar world with two countries, the Soviet Union and America. We now had other countries with long-range missile capability, China and North Korea and Iran moving in that direction. At a time when most in this country were saying, let us provide some flexibility in the way this treaty is being interpreted, what did the Clinton administration do? They sent our U.S. negotiators to Geneva where we were in ongoing discussions with the Russians over the ABM treaty.

Instead of trying to find ways to make the ABM treaty more flexible, the Clinton administration was negotiating a tightening up of the ABM treaty, contrary to the thought of almost everyone in this country. I for the life of me could not understand what the Clinton administration was doing. When I read about these discussions with the Russians, I heard about this plan to multilateralize the treaty, bring other countries in, even though they did not have long range missiles, and I heard about this artificial demarcation, differentiating between theater and national missile defense, Madam Speaker, I did something that no other Member of Congress did.

I went to Geneva. I got the approval of our State Department, and we set up a negotiating session. The chief U.S. negotiator was on my side, Stanley Rivales and the chief Russian negotiator was sitting across from me, General Koltunov. We talked for 2 1/2 hours about the administration's negotiations for these two ideas of tightening up the ABM treaty. So I inquired of General Koltunov, "General, why do you in Russia want to bring more countries in as signatories to the ABM treaty?" Only two nations were the original signatories, the Soviet Union and the U.S. Why did you pick three former Soviet states, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, to become equal partners to the U.S. and Russia? That will make it more difficult to amend the treaty. And none of those three countries have long range missiles. They have all been returned to Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

General Koltunov looked at me and he said, "Congressman WELDON, you are asking that question of the wrong person. We didn't propose to multilateralize the treaty. The person sitting next to you did." Meaning that our government was trying to push the Russian government into expanding the treaty to include three former Soviet states. Why would you do that especially when none of those three countries had long range missiles, unless your purpose was to make the ABM treaty more difficult to modify?

The second question dealt with demarcation. I could not understand how we could negotiate with the Russians an artificial differentiation between a theater missile defense system for a given area and a national missile defense with longer range. So I said to the chief Russian negotiator, General Koltunov, "General, explain to me, how did you arrive at these numbers of interceptor speed and range?" ....

General Koltunov told me, after thinking for a few moments, "Well, Congressman, there were serious negotiations between our scientists and your scientists, and they arrived at these numbers." But he did not give me any justification. Well, I was not satisfied. I came back to the United States. We concluded those negotiations in Geneva. President Clinton sent the signal to Russia that America was supportive of tightening up the ABM treaty. So the Russians again for the third time took us at our word. But the Clinton administration knew, Madam Speaker, they could not get either of those two changes to the treaty through the U.S. Senate, even though the U.S. Constitution requires any substantive change to any treaty to be submitted to the Senate for advice and consent.

For 3 years, from 1997 to the year 2000, actually to the year 2001 because that is today, until the end of the Clinton administration, the administration failed to submit either of those two changes to the ABM treaty to the Senate as required by our Constitution so the Senate could debate them.... So for 3 years, the Russians had been convinced by Clinton that we were supportive of tightening up the ABM treaty, even though the administration knew the Senate and the American people would not support those changes.

Last May, when the Russian Duma was considering ratification of the START II treaty, a treaty which our Senate had already passed years ago, the Clinton administration, I am convinced, convinced the Russian leadership to have the Duma add those two changes to the ABM treaty onto the back of the START II treaty. Why would they do that? Because they knew the START II treaty had already been ratified by the Senate and because they knew they could not get those two ABM changes through the Senate, so they said if the Russians add them on, then the Senate will have to accept them when the treaty comes back to us for re-ratification. So when the state Duma in Russia ratified the START II treaty last spring, they added those two Geneva protocols on the START II treaty, it then came back to the U.S., and what did our Senate say? "No way are we going to pass the START II treaty."

So the Russians for the third time saw America going back on what they thought was our word. Three times in 8 years we sent mixed signals to Russia about missile defense. It is no wonder that the Russians do not understand what America's real intentions are in terms of missile defense. Now, they understand my intentions, because I have a good solid relationship with them. They know that I want us to be involved with Russia. The Russians know that we want to be partners with them. We want to find common ground....

I took several Members of Congress from both parties along. We went to Moscow before the vote here so that we could reassure the Russians that our intent in moving forward in missile defense was not to back the Russians into a corner. We did not see Russia as the enemy. We were not doing this to try to create an advantage over Russia. And that we wanted to work together with Russia.

Madam Speaker, I am convinced through my contact with Russian leaders that they can and will understand that America's intent on missile defense is not to create an arms race. The Russians believe in missile defense because they know the threats are real. We believe in missile defense because the threats are real....

Madam Speaker, with the Russian leaders that I work with, people like Dr. Yevghenie Velakof who heads up the Kurchatov Institute understand what we are trying to accomplish. In fact Dr. Velakof and I coauthored an op-ed 3 years ago that was entitled "From Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Protection." Dr. Velakof understands what George Bush is trying to do. When Russians understand that we are serious and want them involved and that we are not playing games, they will cooperate with us....

That is why the Russians are concerned about missile defense. It is not because of the system. It is because of an inconsistent, incoherent, roller coaster foreign policy where three times in 8 years we sent mixed signals to Moscow on missile defense....

In fact, our goal is to work with Russia; it is to work NATO; it is to work with Ukraine; it is to work with Canada; with the European countries to develop something we have not had before, an ability to shoot down offensive missiles.

Mr. Speaker, over 70 nations today in the world have missiles that they control. Countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, India, Pakistan, North Korea and a whole host of other countries all have missiles. Some have conventional weapons on them. Some have the potential to put a chemical or a biological agent on them, but they all have missiles and they all have launchers.

Mr. Speaker, today in the world over 22 nations can build missiles and are building them, and they are selling them to other nations. Missiles are out of control. We did not expect this threat to come from unstable nations for another 15 to 20 years, but over the past 10 years we have lost control of proliferation. Because of Russia's instability and because of China's lack of compliance, Russia and China have allowed technology to flow to unstable nations which then have given those nations abilities in missile technology that we did not think they would have for at least 15 years.

Let me talk about that for a moment, Mr. Speaker, because that has a direct bearing on why President Bush yesterday said we have to have missile defense now, because the threats are here today. Iran now has a Shahab III system they are working on. The Shahab IV and Shahab V, which are medium-range missile systems, can kill tons of people all throughout Europe and can hit Israel directly. We know Iraq has missiles. We know all these countries have missiles.

How did they get this technology, Mr. Speaker? Unfortunately, because of America's lack of enforcement of arms control agreements.

Two years ago, I asked the Congressional Research Service, an independent, bipartisan research arm of the Library of Congress, it is not partisan, all of our colleagues use it, I asked them to do a study for me of how many instances of arms control violations had occurred in the 1990s. I put that report in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD last year.

The answer is that up until 1998, we had evidence that Russia and China had illegally transferred technology, much of it missile technology, to unstable nations in violation of arms control agreements 38 times; 20 times by the Chinese, 18 times by the Russians. The arms control agreements are supposed to have sanctions applied when we catch other countries in violation. Much like if we catch an American company illegally selling technology to a foreign nation that they should noting selling to, we arrest their officers. We fine them and, if necessary, we put them in jail. Thirty-eight times we caught the Russians and Chinese illegally giving technology to our enemies. Only two times out of 38 did we impose the required sanctions when we caught the Chinese transferring M-11 missiles to Pakistan, when we caught the Chinese transferring ring magnets for their nuclear program to Pakistan. The other 36 times we turned our head....

These devices have Soviet markings on them. These devices were clipped off of SSN-19 long-range Soviet missiles. These devices used to be in missiles in Russian submarines aimed at U.S. cities, but because of treaties, when Russia discarded these old missiles they were supposed to destroy these, but they did not do it. We caught the Russians three times transferring not one set of these devices, but over 100 set of these devices to Iraq.

What would Iraq want with them? Iraq would want them to put in their missiles like the one they sent into Desert Storm that killed 28 young Americans to make their missile more accurate. We allowed the technology to flow, and we did nothing about it.

Here is the evidence, Mr. Speaker. I cannot say where I got them, but I can say agencies of our Government have over 100 sets of these devices. And let me say, my guess is there are probably thousands of these devices that were illegally sent from Russian entities to Iraq and Iran....

The biggest challenge for President Bush is rebuilding the trust of the Russian people and its leadership that America wants to be a stable trading partner with Russia. We will not tolerate proliferation. We will not tolerate giving foreign unstable nations illegal technology, but we want Russia to succeed. We want to help them create a mortgage program for their people, which is my number one priority. We want to help their defense industry get back on its feet and produce other products. We want to engage their military with our military. We want to help them solve the problem of nuclear contamination in the Arctic, a big issue for the Russians. We want to help Russia succeed and become a trading partner of the U.S.

Missile defense is not the reason that Russia is concerned, it is the lack of trust and confidence in what America really wants that has the Russian leadership and the Russian people concerned.

Mr. Speaker, we need to move forward with missile defense in cooperation with the Russians and the rest of the peace-loving people in the world. I cannot, for the life of me, as a teacher, understand how those in this country still want to rely on offensive weapons to kill each other, as opposed to defensive weapons to protect our people. That does not make sense to me.

We can achieve what President Bush wants.

Now, it is a tough task, because you are talking about hitting a bullet with a bullet, stopping a projectile in the atmosphere that is moving very quickly, and stopping it with another bullet. And you cannot hit that projectile when it is on the way down or it will rain terror on the people in that country, in this case our people....

We need technology, as President Bush rightly outlined, to hit the missile in the ascent phase, as it is on the way up. It is called boost-phase intercept. The reason why that is important is, you knock that missile out on the way up, and the only people harmed are the people who launched the missile against someone else.

What President Bush is saying is, we need to develop a new capability, using technology with our allies, to give us that kind of protection; and he has proposed for the first time in the last 10 years that he will use the bully pulpit to move the technology forward.

Are we prepared today? No. There still is additional testing. Have we had success? Absolutely. Out of 31 attempts, we have been successful in over half of them. Our THAAD program has had intercepts, successful ones. Our PAC-3 program has had five successful intercepts. Our National Missile Defense program has had one successful intercept. We know the technology is achievable. It is an engineering problem to integrate the systems, and that is the challenge that we have to help the President overcome.

I am convinced, Mr. Speaker, that those of our colleagues in this body and the other body who supported missile defense last year and the year before will again come back and support President Bush. This is not a partisan issue. The battle for missile defense in America was not a Republican battle; it was won by a bipartisan effort with Democrats and Republicans coming together, understanding that threats were emerging quicker than we thought they would emerge.

We need to work together to give the President the kind of support he has outlined in his vision for a new world order, one where we focus cooperative efforts together. The Europeans can cooperate with us, as they are already doing. In fact, I am hoping right now to establish a meeting, an unofficial meeting, in one of the Arab countries, where I will plan to invite the Israelis and the Russians to sit down and have a conversation about how we can jointly pursue missile defense cooperation in the Middle East, with Jews and allies working together, with Americans and Russians....

The chairman of the International Affairs Committee for the Russian Duma, Dmitrii Rogozin, will be here, and he and I and others will come together and talk about cooperation. We will then travel to Moscow and we will have a conference in Moscow on missile defense cooperation. We will work together to find common ground, to build confidence among both countries to move forward together.

We need to put away the arguments and the petty wars of the Cold War era. Relying on mutually assured destruction is not the answer. Working together for peaceful protection of our friends, our allies and our neighbors, is the solution of the 21st century. That is what George Bush outlined for us yesterday. He is on the right track. He did not say we have all the answers, because we do not, but he did say, together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish....

There are those who will say, there are a few of them, who will say this is not technologically possible. Mr. Speaker, that is hogwash. In fact, to counter those, we have put together a task force of professors. None of the professors we have on this ad hoc committee are working for any contractor. They are all professors.

I am going to be inviting all of my colleagues in Congress to ask those professors, one at a time or as a group, to come into your offices.... They will be available as we begin this debate to counter those who will simply try to use their doctorate titles to convince us that somehow we cannot accomplish this.

I asked the head of the Boeing program in a hearing last year, a fellow by the name of Dr. Teller, how difficult it was to achieve the result of missile defense for America and its people.... He said managing the Space Station was a tougher challenge than building missile defense.

Together, Republicans and Democrats, allies and our own people, we can create a new world, a safe world, where all of our people can be protected from what happened to those 28 Americans in 1991.