Mr. President, I thank my distinguished friend, John Warner, for his very thoughtful comments about the origin of the program and the initial bipartisan breakfast of Senators that in the latter stages of the 1991 session made possible the…
Mr. President, I thank my distinguished friend, John Warner, for his very thoughtful comments about the origin of the program and the initial bipartisan breakfast of Senators that in the latter stages of the 1991 session made possible the cooperative threat reduction legislation.
I am honored that Senator John Glenn and Annie are likewise witnessing the program today, along with our distinguished colleagues, Senator Warner and Senator Levin, who have meant so much to all of us in formulating the defense policy.
I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Senators Levin, Obama, Lott, Jeffords, Nelson of Florida, Voinovich, Dodd, Leahy, Nelson of Nebraska, Murkowski, Kennedy, Chafee, Collins, Alexander, Allen, Salazar, Hagel, DeWine, Reed, Dorgan, Mikulski, Biden, Stabenow, Bingaman, Akaka, and Lautenberg, and ask for its immediate consideration.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
Mr. President, I likewise would like to ask that Senator Feinstein and Senator Enzi be added as cosponsors of the amendment.
Mr. President, my amendment is based upon S. 313, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act of 2005, which I first offered in November 2004 and reintroduced this January. It is focused on facilitating implementation of the program and removing some of the self-imposed restrictions that complicate or delay the destruction of weapons of mass destruction. By self-imposed, I mean restrictions imposed by our Government on our programs which bring about delay, sometimes very severe delay, at a time that we take seriously the war on terrorism, and the need, as a matter of fact, to bring under control materials and weapons of mass destruction as rapidly and as certainly as possible.
In essence, I am going to argue in various forms during the next few minutes that the United States of America, contrary to almost all common sense, imposes upon itself the need to examine year by year specifically Russian cooperation, Russian money, whether moneys are fungible; that is, moneys that are spent by the United States to work with Russians to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Russia and elsewhere, whether we are, in fact, serious about this.
If we came to a conclusion that for some reason the Russians had not spent precisely the amount of money that we think they ought to spend, does any Senator believe we at that point should stop taking warheads off of missiles, should stop trying to get control of weapons of mass destruction in the chemical and biological areas? Of course not. We have constructed for 14 years an extraordinary situation in which from time to time Senators, some of whom had come new to the floor, were not here during the end of the Cold War or any of the Cold War for that matter, and said simply: We are suspicious of Russians. We are not sure we ought to be helping them at all. Why should they not destroy 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons? Why should they not pay for it? They made their bed. Let them sleep in it. In essence, if they do not destroy it, that is their problem.
Long ago, as Senator Warner pointed out, we found it was our problem. The 13,300 nuclear warheads were aimed at us, sometimes 10 warheads to a missile--multiple reentry vehicles they were called. That is the problem. We thought, as a matter of fact, for our safety, after a half century, it was useful to work with Russians who came to visit with Senator Nunn and with me and who asked for our help. They said: We have a problem in Russia, but you have a problem, too. Those warheads are aimed at your cities and they are still up there on the missiles, and the tactical warheads are still out there, and privateers as the Red Army breaks up could cart them off on flat bed trucks to Iran, Iraq, Libya, wherever there is a market for them.
As a matter of fact, the Wall Street Journal helpfully published an article about how one could take a missile out on a flat bed truck. So this was not rocket science. Even at that time people were still putting on stipulations.
Why does that matter? It matters because at the beginning of each new budget year the President of the United States and various agencies involved have to go through thousands of bureaucratic hours examining all of the stipulations that have been added by some Member of the House or Senate over the years to try to divine whether there has been proper compliance.
At the end of the day, the law now states--and in fairness, the Senate Armed Services Committee has provided--that there will be a permanent waiver authority.
After all of these thousands of hours of bureaucratic hassling, the President can finally say: Listen, we are in a war on terror. Let's get on with it. But, apparently, the President would be hard-pressed to do that before going through all the machinations.
I am just saying, it is time to take seriously weapons of mass destruction, materials of mass destruction. It is time to get over the thought that somehow or another the Russians may or may not be cooperative because the fact is, it is our program, cooperation with the Russians, that has brought about at this point some remarkable results.
Let me recite some of those results. During the last 14 years, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated or destroyed 6,624 nuclear warheads; 580 ICBMs; 477 ICBM silos; 21 ICBM mobile missile launchers; 147 bombers--these were the transcontinental bombers that could have carried nuclear weapons across the oceans to us, and they have been destroyed--789 nuclear air-to-surface missiles; 420 submarine missile launchers; 546 submarine launched missiles; 28 nuclear submarines; 194 nuclear test tunnels.
Perhaps most importantly, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, who emerged from the former Soviet Union situation as the third, fourth, and eighth largest nuclear weapons powers in the world, all three are now free as a result of the cooperative threat reduction program, the so-called Nunn-Lugar program, of nuclear weapons.
This did not happen easily. In each of the years in which these destructive efforts with regard to the former Soviet ICBMs and cruise missiles and what have you came about, there had to be competitive bidding conducted by the Department of Defense. In every year, this was delayed because, once again, each of the stipulations added by a Senator or Member of the House had to be examined and had to be met.
In some years, in the early parts of the program, waivers were not available; waivers never occurred. The fiscal year ran out and nothing happened in many programs. I find it incomprehensible why, at this particular point in history, after 14 years of this experience, there are still Members who would argue we still should go through the thousands of hours of bureaucratic hassles every year, even if there is a Presidential waiver at the end of the trail that says: Call it off. Let's get on with the war on terror.
It seems to be almost a theological bent of some Members, who I suspect have a feeling that anything involving Russians or recipients of weapons of mass destruction or materials requires a whole lot of examination before we take the active steps to work with them to destroy the material.
In any event, I commend the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, my friend, Senator Warner, and the ranking member, Senator Levin, for the important legislative efforts they have made. They have been steadfast in their support of the program throughout the years. They played critical roles in the success of the program. This year they have brought to the floor a bill that contains full funding for Nunn- Lugar programs, some $415 million. They also embraced one of the most important elements of my earlier bill, S. 313, namely the transfer of authority from the President to the Secretary of Defense for approval of Nunn-Lugar projects outside the former Soviet Union.
In 2003, Congress authorized the President to use up to $50 million in Nunn-Lugar funds for operations outside the former Soviet Union. The legislation requires the President to certify that the utilization of the Nunn-Lugar funds outside the former Soviet Union will address a dangerous proliferation threat or achieve a longstanding nonproliferation opportunity in a short period of time.
President Bush used this authority to authorize the destruction of 16 tons of chemical weapons in Albania. Let me say the Albanian experience is instructive, not only because good results occurred, but the very circumstances require the Senate, it seems to me, to focus on the world in which we live. Word came to officers in the Pentagon, in the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, from authorities in Albania last year, 2004, that weapons of mass destruction were in Albania, specifically chemical weapons of mass destruction. This was a surprise to our authorities, quite apart from Members of this body. I was privileged to accompany members of our Armed Forces and members of the Albanian Armed Forces on a trip into the mountains outside of Tirana, the capital city of Albania. Up in the mountains we came upon canisters. We saw a number of them. As a matter of fact, by the time the compilation was completed, 16 tons of chemical weapons, nerve gas, were discovered in Albania.
We had a program, because we had adopted it a short time before, in which we knew that $50 million might be allocated outside the former Soviet Union. Obviously we were going to need that program. But the dilemma immediately was that a number of signoffs was required. Members will recall we were in an election year in 2004. We were able to get signatures ultimately from the Secretary of State. It was very difficult for people at the White House to accumulate the papers and requirements for President Bush to sign off, but eventually he did. But nevertheless, it was roughly a 60-day period from time of discovery.
In this particular instance, a $20 million program of neutralization will eventually take care of that risk, and it is a very substantial one. But my point is it will not be the last one.
I commend the Armed Services Committee for recognizing the need for expedited review and decisionmaking when it comes to these emergency situations. This may be an instance in the war against terror in which we had success, and we had success beyond that. While we were up in the mountains, the Albanian soldiers took us by sheds in which there were 79 Manpad missiles. As part of the good will of that expedition, they agreed to destroy those in September of 2004, and they did so.
Furthermore, as another feature, the next day when we were out of the mountains, in the office of the Minister of Defense of Albania, he talked about his plans for a military academy, a modest beginning at least of training of young officers, with one of the skills to be required a facility in the English language. In essence, they wanted to continue talking to us and continue working with us so there would be fewer and fewer surprises.
I would contend in the war against terror we are going to have many surprises and we better have very rapid responses. I thank the drafters of the legislation we are considering today for their consideration of this.
Let me say the problem of the overall situation in Russia remains as confounding as before. It is a peculiar thought that some of the programs of the Cooperative Reduction Program that occur in the Department of State and Department of Energy do not have these stipulations. They are literally a hangover from the first Nunn-Lugar
debates in 1981--people suspicious of Russia, still suspicious of Russia, and believing, because they are exercising their suspicions of the Russians, that somehow this has something to do with destruction of weapons of mass destruction. We have to get over that and that is the purpose of this debate today, to try to get on and try to understand the world in which we live, including Russia.
The question finally is, what national security benefit do these so- called certification requirements provide the American people? Do these conditions I would advocate terminating make it easier or harder to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Russia--or elsewhere, for that matter? Do the conditions make it more likely or less likely that weapons are going to be eliminated? It would be hard to argue logically that putting more and more conditions upon action help us in destroying weapons and materials of mass destruction. They obviously hinder us. In some years they stopped us for months. We did this to ourselves. We continue to do it to ourselves, year after year.
Congress imposed an additional six conditions on construction of the chemical weapons destruction program at Shchuch'ye, after imposing all of the other conditions with regard to nuclear weapons in Russia. These conditions include, No. 1, full and accurate Russian declaration on the size of its chemical weapons stockpile. Experts have argued for 14 years over whether Russia has specifically 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons or something more or less, and we will be arguing about it every year so long as we have a stipulation that we have to have this argument. Some will claim that Russia has never made a full declaration of all of it. But, nevertheless, it is not a good reason for stopping the program, because we are dissatisfied with whether the Russians have come clean on every pound--or ton, for that matter--when there are 40,000 metric tons we know of that need to be destroyed.
No. 2, every year we have to talk about allocation by Russia of at least $25 million--its equivalent in Russian currency--to chemical weapons elimination. We also argue about whether Russia has developed a practical plan for destroying the stockpile of nerve agents and whether enactment of a law by Russia that provides for elimination of all nerve agents at a single site is valid.
We have been arguing about the single site problem for quite a while. We have at this point, I suspect, a general summation that probably chemical weapons will be destroyed at three sites. I simply point these things out because in order each year to start up the program, all of these arguments must go back through the bureaucracy. Somebody must certify that the Russians have, in fact, appropriated $25 million, that they have made a full declaration--40,000 metric tons or more; that we wish they would do it all in one place, and we are still arguing with them over that.
In essence, what is the alternative? Let us say that for some reason someone contends at the time Russians have 41,000 tons. Is this a good reason to delay any destruction, any further security in our benefit? Not at all. That is the essence of what we are talking about today-- stipulations that long ago were obsolete, were, if not a figment of someone's imagination on the floor of the Senate, a deliberate, provocative act to get an argument going with the Russians that could never in fact be consummated. I suggest that some have said, well, at worst the certification process is simply an annoyance; that by this time in history we go through the process every year and the predictable arguments are made, the thousands of hours are spent, reports are filed, they are bumped up from one desk to the next, and then ultimately at the end of the trail the President waives the whole business and we get on with the program.
While well-intentioned, these conditions, in my judgment, seriously delay and complicate constructive efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction.
I get back to this again. If the No. 1 security threat facing our country is weapons of mass destruction, the security of those weapons, the destruction of those weapons, we cannot permit delays in our response.
I was interested last year, as I know you were, Mr. President, in a very vigorous debate between President George Bush and our colleague, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. But one thing on which the President and Senator Kerry agreed was that the No. 1 national threat was what we are talking about today: weapons of mass destruction, proliferation of those into the hands of terrorists. They agreed this is the essence of what all of our defense business is about, ultimately. All I am suggesting is, given the urgency of this, the illogic of delaying, deliberately delaying on our part, bureaucratically, year after year, even if finally, as I say, at the end of the day we give the President the right to waive the whole thing and say, enough of this, get on with it--we must finally come to grips, and this amendment does, and that is what the argument is about today-- to eliminate these barriers that are self-imposed and that I believe are destructive to our national security.
Let me make a point. In 2002--to get the facts--the Bush administration withheld certification for Russia because of the concerns about chemical and biological weapons arenas. President Bush recognized the predicament. The President said, How can we get out of this predicament? And he requested waiver authority for the congressionally imposed conditions. While awaiting a temporary waiver to be authorized in law, the new Nunn-Lugar projects were stalled, and no new contracts could be finalized from April 16, 2002, to August 9, 2002. This delay--and this is just 3 years ago--caused numerous disarmament projects in Russia to be put on hold, including, specifically, installation of security enhancements at 10 nuclear weapons storage sites, initiation of the dismantlement of two strategic missile submarines, 30 submarine launched ballistic missiles, and initiation of the dismantlement of the SS-24 rail mobile and the SS-25 road mobile ICBMs and launchers--all of these deliberately delayed by us. We did this ourselves. This is what these restrictions are about. Clearly, these projects were in our national security interest at the beginning of April and August when we finally got on with it. But they were delayed because of self-imposed conditions and the bureaucratic redtape that we have continually perpetrated year after year after year.
The second period of delays began when the fiscal year started, October 1, 2002--back into it all over again--with the expiration of the temporary waiver that lasted only until September 30, 2002. Again, U.S. national security suffered with the postponement of critical dismantlement of security activities for some 6 additional weeks until the Congress acted.
Unfortunately, the events of 2002, although they are fairly recent, are reminiscent of what occurred in the years prior to that. They are the rule. In some years, as a matter of fact, Nunn-Lugar funds were not available for expenditure until more than half of the fiscal year had passed and weapons of mass destruction slated for dismantlement awaited the U.S. bureaucratic process. This means the program during those times was denied funds for large portions of the year. The bureaucracy continued to generate reams of paper and yet ultimately produced an outcome that was never in doubt; namely, that it is in the national security interest of our country to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Russia and elsewhere.
Let me say, finally, Mr. President, this certification consumes not only hundreds of man-hours in the Defense Department but in the State Department, in the intelligence community, and the energy community. Obviously the time could better be spent tackling the problems of proliferation where, in fact, the materials are--where are the Albanias of the future; identifying the next A.Q. Kahn in Pakistan and that network, locating hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons, as many of us have attempted to do.
Mr. President, let me add as a personal thought, it is apparent, I suspect, with the urgency with which I approach this that I take it seriously, and I do, and I think a majority of Senators do. I plan to visit Russia again in August, as I have each year for the last 14. I plan to visit Ukraine. I hope to go to Azerbaijan. I hope to go to other countries that I think might develop
during those trips. It has been my experience that while in Russia, Russians came to me and asked would I like to visit Sevmash, Sevmash being where the Typhoon submarines are. No American has been invited to Sevmash. There have been no invitations to anyone to destroy six Typhoon submarines. I said: Of course, I would like to go to Sevmash. And I did go to Sevmash. Russians took pictures of submarines, including one of me standing in front of a large Typhoon, and in due course they sent the pictures to me. I must say, this was the best view that our authorities had had of a Typhoon in some time.
Now, the fact is, it is cooperative threat reduction. There was no particular reason for the Typhoons to come into play at that particular moment, nor for other submarine programs on other occasions. But the nature of the dialog, in fact, if there is engagement, has been to bring about revelations and finally additional cooperation.
I make that point because the gist of all these controls is a supposition that the Russians will be uncooperative, that they will hide what they have, and in some cases they have. On another occasion, I tried to get into a bioweapons situation and was denied that access. They told us the Air Force plane could take off, but it would not be able to land. In due course they changed their minds but not totally, and I took this up with the Defense Minister in Moscow. He admitted bureaucracy in Russia sometimes creates problems for him and for Russians who want to be cooperative.
I mention these situations anecdotally because as far as I am concerned there is a hands-on operation. This is something personal. I have been there, I have seen, I have worked, and this is why, perhaps, I become so infuriated with people who are determined, bureaucratically, to block it, year after year to delay it, until finally out of exasperation, we have adopted waivers so that somehow we can get on with our own national security.
But this is the debate today. Those who want to get rid of the bureaucracy and the stipulations will vote in favor of the Lugar amendment, and those who want to keep all of this can vote against it, and we will have an up-or-down vote because this is a critical national security objective. I cannot put it more directly or more simply.
The delays have given on occasion, if there were those in Russia who wished to hide whatever they have, an opportunity simply to blame the United States for slow program implementation as we took the spotlight off of failure on the other side with our friends in Russia. Therefore, Mr. President, I am hopeful that this amendment will have very strong support. I am grateful for Senators who have, in fact, cosponsored the amendment as well as the original bill.
I would conclude by indicating that during my talk today, Senators Rockefeller, McCain, Bennett, Lautenberg, Murray, and Schumer have all asked to be added as cosponsors. I thank each of these Senators for their cosponsorship.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from Secretary Rice, and this follows direct questioning of the Secretary during her confirmation about her support of this very objective we are talking about today. And she does support what I want to do.
Finally, I will submit additional letters that have come from other officials of our Government, from the National Security Council and the Department of Defense.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
Mr. President, let me respond directly. I do oppose the conditions. The purpose of my amendment is to eliminate the conditions. The reason I want to eliminate the conditions, and the Senator from Arizona has simply
illustrated that in his recitation of them--for example, No. 5, complying with all relevant arms control agreements. That is a work of art every year for people to fathom whether the Russians have complied with every one of those agreements. The question is, What if we decide they have not? Is this, then, the reason we stop destroying Russian warheads, missiles, submarines? Just stop cold because we say the Russians, in our judgment--and there is usually a debate among those in the Pentagon about this--have not got it quite right?
Even more, No. 6, observing internationally recognized human rights, including the protection of minorities, I am not certain that almost any Senate or administration official has ever come to a conclusion that the Russians have been observing all internationally recognized human rights for 14 years. Yet someone is still arguing we ought to leave that on the statute books as a reason the bureaucrats in our country ponder about the human rights conditions in Russia for as many weeks and so forth until the President says: We have had enough, I waive it, let's get on.
To suggest that it is extreme to leave these situations on the books, it seems to me, is not at all logical given our own activity and the fact that we are fighting a war on terror. This is not simply a grant of inconsequential effort with regard to our security, it is the whole ball game.
Or condition No. 4, facilitating U.S. verification of weapons destruction carried out under the program. As a rule, we have had pretty good fortune with the CTR people following through precisely what has occurred but not in all instances. If you go to Russia and you visit with our people on the ground, they will give you instances immediately in which they are having trouble with Russian friends who do not want to let them see what has occurred. Then we all argue, as military and civilians, with our Russian friends that we really do need to see these situations. We are on the ground and we have tried to work it out. But back here, to make an evaluation that we have not seen all of it and therefore we stop the music makes no sense at all at this point in history.
On the conditions on the chemical business, they were not at all helpful, to say the least. It is an ongoing process of getting something done still, trying to get the international community's money into it, trying to get the Russians over the threshold as the Duma. This is hard work but back here not so hard to say we want to evaluate, Are the Russians making a substantial investment? Well, what is substantial? Sometimes people have put a figure on it--$25 million, I mentioned in my speech. That was another stipulation. An allocation of $25 million, someone came up with here. I am not sure how we know; we are not able to audit the books.
We can make some judgments as to whether a substantial effort is being made, but let's take the other case: The Russians make no attempt. They say, We are bankrupt, and they were in the early years of the program. Is that a reason why we do nothing, then? Do we just stop the music and say, You are not making a reasonable allocation?
The old argument used to be called fungibility, the thought that somehow if U.S. taxpayer money got into Russia and we worked to destroy nuclear warheads, take them off the missile and so forth, the Russians would not have to spend money doing that and therefore they would spend it on something else of a nefarious nature. I am not sure that many persons in the Russian military ever were excited about taking the warheads off of the missiles, about destroying the missiles, about destroying all the submarines, destroying the transcontinental bombers. I don't think there was a wave of enthusiasm, people in the streets demanding that their government do these things.
The fact is that cooperative threat reduction, as the Russian generals told Sam Nunn, is something that is our problem, but it is your problem because you folks in the United States have the contractors, you have the money, you have the organization. These are not funds donated in a United Way project to Russia. They are funds largely spent with American contractors, American experts, American people who take their time and at some risk to themselves have gone to Russia, and now to other places, to dismantle dangerous weapons and try to corral dangerous material in the benefit of all of us.
Because in another forum we would be having the speech: What happens if al-Qaida gets their hands on even a few pounds of fissionable material? What would have happened if even a small weapon had been on a plane that went into the World Trade Center? Then we have briefings from experts that show concentric circles of death and destruction, of hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their lives. That is the issue.
Anyone who is delaying this has to give some better reason for it than at some point a Member of the House or Senate thought it might be a good idea to ask the Russians what they are doing. Of course, that is a good idea. Those of us who have been visiting with the Russians ask it all the time and, as a matter of fact, have a very tough-minded attitude, which they appreciate because they have the same feeling for us.
But I am saying we have come to a time in which we have to understand it is not useful to require that before Nunn-Lugar funds are spent each year there be a symposium on how human rights are going in Russia and, therefore, at the end of the day the President waives it and says: OK, not so good, but, after all, American security is still what I am after as Commander in Chief.
Let me reiterate. I think it is important to clean the books, to get on with a program in which we understand, as Americans, we want to work with Russians to destroy weapons of mass destruction every year without delay. If the $415 million that is in this bill is appropriated, ultimately--and I hope it will be--we want to be able to spend that from October 1 onward. As has been pointed out, the waiver authority, even as it is, dies September 30. What happens if for some reason there is a conference hassle on the Department of Defense appropriations bill apart from the authorization bill? Certainly that happens in the body, and with the other body, from time to time. And when it has happened before, the music stopped. We did it to ourselves. We cannot afford to continue doing that.
Mr. President, I yield time to my distinguished colleague, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin.
Mr. President, may I inquire how much time is on either side to be utilized?
Mr. President, let me take a moment to thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan for his very strong words and, likewise, to echo his commendation of you, as I do at this moment in this debate.
Very clearly, each one of us has attempted to do our best in this area. I am proud to have pictures of all of us in my office, standing in front of missiles and explosives and all the elements that have marked 14 remarkable years.
This entire program is counterintuitive. Those who looked at the half century that preceded 1991, the breakup of the former Soviet Union, would say: Here we are, two superpowers. A number of estimates were wrong on all sides about the economy of Russia, maybe the economy of our country or the relative strengths we had at that time. It was not until several years later that we knew there were 13,300 warheads on those missiles. We had estimates of that, but we now know that. We know exactly how many have been taken off and how many are still to be taken off, and how many missiles remain as vehicles, and how many submarines remain. This is remarkable. This is a degree of cooperation that is very substantial.
There are some elements that we still do not know. I would claim that our Russian friends have been in denial on a good number of the biological programs, while they would say they were not weapons programs. They were something else dealing with livestock or other elements. We have had differences, and I would say there are still four situations in Russia in which none of us have had access. Therefore, those who argue that there is no good reason to raise questions of the Russians argue well. But my logic at the end of the day, even if the Russians have not been forthcoming on these four biological situations on which I have sought access, physically asked to go and may some day be admitted, if for some reason they may find it useful to admit me, that is not a good reason to delay for one week or one month or any time the movement of the moneys, the programs, the contractors, the American spirit that is working with a number of Russians in this window of history that was miraculously opened.
I hope it will be open for a long time. I hope the cooperation with Russia will continue so that we do have, together, access, and so do other partners in the G8, in the so-called ``10 plus 10 over 10'' program. It is because we will need more time. We need to make certain that we do not make mistakes, certainly the ones we can avoid. I am suggesting today that we can avoid mistakes--and by eliminating these conditions, we will at least remove one of them--and that we have then an opportunity to continue to be forthcoming with the Russians in asking them to work with us in their own interest.
Finally, when I was in vaults in which there are nuclear warheads lying almost akin to bodies in a morgue, I noted little tablets at the top of these which had Russian inscriptions. I asked: What is on those? They said: This tells when the weapon was built. It gives a service record. These weapons are not inert sporting guns' ammunition sitting on a shelf. They require servicing. There is a chemical mixture going on there that, without proper care, can lead to dire results. We don't know, nor do the Russians, what the results are.
Therefore, down on the tab there is an estimate of the efficacy of the weapon; that is, how long the warhead probably would work if it were taken out of the vault and put back on a missile. Then you have even a stranger estimate, and that is when it might become dangerous; that is an event, a nuclear event in Russia with dastardly results for Russians.
This is one reason why this is not totally counterintuitive. If you still have thousands of these weapons in warhead form, you want to make certain you have a partner who has some money and some expertise, and you try to make sure you use that money on the oldest ones first before you work out what is going to happen historically, something none of us have thus far had the horror to find out.
This is serious business. We all take it that way. I appreciate the spirit of the debate.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Texas has yielded to me a minute of time, and I deeply appreciate that, so that I have an opportunity to add as cosponsors to my amendment Senators Conrad, Boxer, and Durbin.
Earlier, I mentioned the letters from Secretary Rice and, likewise, one from the 9/11 Commission, in which the Commission summarized that we believe that S. 313--the genesis of my amendment--is an important step forward in protecting the United States in catastrophic circumstances.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Sarbanes be added as a cosponsor to the amendment.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
I ask unanimous consent that Senators Landrieu, Sununu, Bayh, Smith, and Carper be added as cosponsors to my amendment.