Arlen Specter Quotes

I felt from the start that America was not likely to relinquish lightly positions established at the cost of such sacrifices, and I pressed the view that a high degree of preparation and willingness to make sacrifices would be necessary on our side, but everybody here always persists in facile optimism until the very worst actually happens.

To sum up, the position we took was that since we didn't know the internal situation in Iraq nor Saddam Hussein, that our best bet was to take counsel from the people who did know him and who did deal with him.

The President never intends to get into any kind of war situation. He gets carried away by events.

In foreign policy, the only thing worse than not doing something is doing something that fails or makes the situation worse.

Current war plans call for the defense of Quemoy and Matsu by nuclear strikes deep into China …. The United States does not have a politically feasible capability to defend Quemoy and Matsu. I question whether, in the event of an attack on Quemoy and Matsu, we should or will run the very grave risk of general nuclear war attendant on our present military planning.

I will not put the life of an American service member on the line unless that is the option of last resort.

What I'm saying is it is our responsibility to exercise due diligence, to ask the tough questions, to get the evidence before we make those very costly decisions about how and when and where our military is used.

Relieving the risk of a nuclear conflict with Iran diplomatically is superior than trying to do that militarily.

Rushing to war is not a wise course of action.

Israel's security policy is determined by our needs. I strongly reject all the unfounded publicity suggesting that Israel is prevented from taking action because of international pressure.

Many Europeans are concerned that stronger sanctions are a slippery slope toward war unless the U.S. is at the table.

War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.

Your message is stupid. Iraq is not afraid of you or anyone else when it has a right to claim. What you warned about is not on Iraq's agenda. Iraq is vital and powerful. It is not an opportunistic country. Your administration has not learned from the past.

This nation's elected leaders owe all Americans the duty of formulating an Iraqi policy based on sound analysis of the actual facts.

That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now.

Democrats always assure us that deterrence will work, but when the time comes to deter, they're against it.

I'm just very wary that once you start military operations in any country, it's very difficult to predict what the outcome is.

In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

I would not suggest the U.S. should sit down with the North Koreans bilaterally immediately after they've fired missiles - because the appearance is that you reward bad behavior. But if North Korea behaves for some period of time, I would pretty much favor direct talks.

I'm taking a bit of a wait-and-see attitude towards 3D.

Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962, do you think he would have avoided a nuclear war?

Everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons, but no one is talking about it. The world doesn't want nuclear weapons - not in Israel, not in the Middle East and not anywhere in the world.

We probably could more successfully resolve the North Korean nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning. We could successfully resolve what American leaders seem to perceive as an Iranian nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.