Press Release

U.S. Senator — Oklahoma

James M. Inhofe

453 Russell Senate Office Building * Washington, D.C. 20510 *

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 26, 1998

INHOFE DISAGREES WITH JOINT CHIEFS
ON MISSILE DEFENSE POLICY

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) today released an exchange of
letters
between himself and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concerning
the recently published Rumsfeld Commission Report and its relation to U.S. policy on national
missile defense.

“I am disappointed, but not surprised, that Joint Chiefs would endorse the administration’s
policies to delay deployment of a national missile defense system, even in spite of the findings of
the Rumsfeld Report,” Inhofe said.

“Nevertheless, I and many of my colleagues in Congress, continue to believe those policies
are
shortsighted and inadequate. We believe the Rumsfeld Report reinforces the urgent need to
change those policies. Specifically, a firm decision to deploy a limited national missile defense
system should not be further postponed. Breaking out from under the arbitrary and outdated
constraints of the ABM Treaty is long overdue.

“I am not particularly reassured that the Joint Chiefs think the emergence of an unexpected
long
range missile threat is ‘unlikely.’ The recent nuclear tests in India and Pakistan were also
‘unlikely.’ The recent bombings of our embassies in Africa were considered ‘unlikely.’ The
survival of Saddam Hussein as a menace to world security once seemed ‘unlikely.’ That a threat is
‘unlikely’ is no longer, by itself, a good enough basis on which to formulate national security
policy affecting the lives of millions of Americans.

“Similarly, I am not reassured to hear the worn out line that the ABM Treaty remains the
cornerstone of ‘strategic stability with Russia’ when Russia is far from the only threat we face.
By making a virtue of our vulnerability, the ABM Treaty only reinforces the discredited policy of
mutual assured destruction at a time when the U.S. is being targeted by numerous potentially
undeterrable rogue states and terrorists. The vulnerability of our population is the
problem, not
the solution.

“The fact is we have it in our power, through technology and political will, to affordably
protect
the American people from limited long range missile attacks. It should be the policy of the United
States to do so with all deliberate speed.”