[Paul Ross]

our decision to proceed with reductions as deep as the ones outlined in the Moscow Treaty is premised on decisions to invest in a number of other critical areas, such as intelligence, ballistic and cruise missile defense, and a variety of conventional weapons programs funded in our 2003 budget request.

A false dichotomy. Either maintain our inexpensive ALREADY deployed weapons which have preserved the peace, and keep them in readiness for whomever threatens...or increase intell, NMD, and conventional weapons programs. A patriotic president would be saying let's have both. Only traitors would say we can't. It is truly alarming what GWB is saying through Donald...

[Paul Ross]

Our approach in the Nuclear Posture Review was to recognize that we are entering a period of surprise and uncertainty, when the sudden emergence of unexpected threats will be increasingly common feature of our security environment. We were surprised on September 11th—and let there be no doubt, we will be surprised again.

Our intelligence has repeatedly underestimated the capabilities of different countries of concern to us. We have historically have had gaps in our knowledge of 2, 6, 8, and in at least one case 12 or 13 years. Indeed, the only surprise is that so many among us are still surprised. This is problem is more acute in an age when the spread of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of terrorist states—and potentially terrorist networks—means that our margin of error is significantly less than it has been. The cost of a mistake could be not thousands, but tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives.