Word: laird
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Option to Ride Out. While Laird found it "most encouraging to see a national debate" growing on ABM, he did not budge under attack. Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore told Laird that deploying ABMs "would make armaments-limitation agreement more difficult, if not impossible, to attain, and thus ultimately could degrade our deterrence." Laird replied soothingly that he would like nothing better than to see his job done away with by disarmament. Gore described the ABM scornfully as "a defense in search of a mission," noting that the system had been switched from defending cities to protecting missile sites...
...asked Symington, could the U.S. not launch ICBMs at an attacker's territory as rapidly as it could fire ABMs at incoming missiles? Laird passed the question to Dr. John Foster, the Pentagon's research and engineering chief, who replied that he would much rather the U.S. had an option to "ride out" an attack before it had to commit its missiles to irrevocable retaliation. That was one of the few fresh points made on either side...
Fulbright accused Laird of making public classified information that helped his case while withholding secret data that might harm it. In an impassioned outburst, Fulbright accused Laird and the Nixon Administration of applying a "technique of fear" in order to justify...
...tenth U.S. Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, seemed to have unpopular lines to speak onstage all week. Returning from a four-day trip to Viet Nam, he rendered the disappointing (if far from final) verdict that no reduction in the number of U.S. troops there seems foreseeable now. Testifying before two Senate committees, he vigorously defended the Administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, which has widespread opposition, by reporting that the Soviet Union has made considerable advances in offensive weaponry. Then he disclosed that the new defense budget could be cut by no more than...
...Laird is well-cast as the bearer of such news. He has long prided himself on his hardline, no-nonsense approach to military affairs. He developed a considerable expertise on the subject as a member for 14 years of the House Appropriations subcommittee, which oversees all defense expenditures. Twice, in fact, he taxed Robert Mc-Namara with underestimating costs in Viet Nam and produced his own calculations, which McNamara rejected. On both occasions, Laird turned out to be right...