Word: aspin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even in the tensest moments, both sides are sensitive to how the world views the confrontation. Congressman Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who plays the White House chief of staff, leaves at one point to hold a press conference. On the Moscow end, Yevgeni Velikhov, vice president of the Academy of Sciences, reminds his comrades that they need to keep the Supreme Soviet, or parliament, informed of developments...
...Administration's caution: in the past, many of them had espoused anti-interventionist sentiments in Nicaragua and toward the Navy escorts of Kuwaiti oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq war. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts called the episode "a black mark on our diplomacy and our values." Congressman Les Aspin of Wisconsin declared, "We should go in and capture Noriega." Aspin differentiated between military intervention and "a snatch. All I want is Noriega." In the face of such belligerence, Republican Senator Robert Dole cracked, "Suddenly the place is filled with hawks. They were all doves during the Persian Gulf...
...Force's estimate of the B-2's price tag, gargantuan as it is, may be far too low. In an exchange with Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin warned that Congress would never go along with the Air Force's plan to spend $8 billion annually -- more than twice the current SDI budget -- on the Stealth. At the more likely spending rate of $3 billion a year, said Aspin, the sticker price would soar to more than $1 billion for each plane...
Many Republicans not only agree with Aspin but are leading the assault on the Stealth. Says the committee's ranking Republican member, William Dickinson of Alabama: "The B-2 program is in a lot of trouble, not for technical reasons but simply by price tag." Declares Ohio Congressman John Kasich: "Nobody's pushed harder for the ((Secretary of Defense Dick)) Cheney / defense budget than I, but America cannot afford the B-2." To South Carolina Republican Arthur Ravenel Jr., cancellation of the B-2 is inevitable, "just like death and taxes...
...into a powerful symbol of the rising tensions between two countries that are close military and diplomatic allies but also archrivals for the economic leadership of the world. "What we're seeing is the emergence of an entirely new concept of national security," says Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "It embraces economics and competitive, commercial relations...