Missile Defense Should Be Top Priority (Rep. Trent Franks)

I have been very engaged in the discussion about how much and when Congress should fund the European Missile Defense Site and discussed this with our allies when I traveled to their countries in the Czech Republic and Poland. I have been cautiously optimistic about Ms. Tauscher’s recent change of heart on the need to build this defense site. For a while people believed the Czech radar would be advantageous even without the interceptors in Poland, but I was pleased when in Prague it was reported that Ms. Tauscher said, “There is no such thing as a Czech radar without Polish silos.

When she returned from Europe she published a piece in which she recognized the real threat from Iran and also the need to build the GMD site. She wrote, “The U.S. intelligence community’s current estimate is that Iran is five to 10 years away from developing such a capability…plainly, this is a very serious threat about which we must be vigilant.