Bob Graham Quotes (72 Quotes)

Yesterday in Palm Beach County, Florida, the 'oops' factor again reared its ugly head, casting doubt in the minds of many Floridians about whether or not their vote was actually counted,

We should first give the Syrians and the Lebanese the opportunity to clean up their own house, ... That is a more serious threat to the United States in my judgment than Saddam Hussein.

I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

We need to make a greater investment in human intelligence.

The herd instinct is as strong with multimillionaires as it is with any two- or four-legged animal.

An error on the part of poll workers pressing the wrong button to activate voting machines prevented many from voting in the Democratic primaries.

The president is clearly making a judgment that it is more important for us to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan than it is to deal with the very serious problems that we have in the United States.

That's an issue that Sen. Kerry will address at the appropriate time.

Florida Sen. Bob Graham and Sen.-elect Bill Nelson -- both Democrats -- warned against a rush to judgment ... would have been an act that would have bled off some of the poison that has affected this process.

I think in the best of worlds, had the information that was available been seen by one set of human eyes or a common group of human eyes, a pattern might have emerged which would have led to further intelligence activities that could have, at the end of the day, disrupted the plot before it was carried out,

When it's fully in place, it will make us stronger and more secure, ... There will inevitably be a time of learning who your new partners are, what the new rules and expectations are, and during that transition time, we may actually see some degree of lessened homeland security.

When units come back they usually do an inventory of what gear they have and what is damaged or missing. When a unit comes in to check out, they need to have a missing or damaged gear statement stamped certified or true copied by their commanding officer. They have to have the statement done within ninety days of return. Instead of having the CO sign thirty missing or damaged gear statements, the unit only has to make one letter which the CO signs and attach the other Marines statements along with it.

A significant number of pages and sentences that the administration wants to keep in a classified status have already been released publicly, some of it by public statements of the leadership of the CIA and the FBI.

It is not always easy for a Cuban-American to be a vocal Democrat in Miami-Dade County,

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

The White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

We failed to see relationships that we should have. We failed to communicate from one agency to the other. Those are part of what we are learning today,

We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.

The president, clearly as a result of the war and the afterglow of the war, is in a time of great attention.

I have had a full and joyful and I hope productive life, and I intend to have other chapters that will meet those same standards,

Nothing found is a smoking gun, ... But collectively I think there was enough there that we should have done a better job of seeing what was coming and hopefully, with luck, stopping it.

I presumed the president was being truthful until a series of events undercut that confidence.

I believe the war in Iraq has actually reduced our ability to effectively carry out that war against terrorism. It has shattered our alliances that will be critical to success in the war on terrorism. At the same time, we have given a pass to some of the countries that have been harboring terrorists so that we could get their vote in the United Nations,

We need to have a strong defense focused on areas that are in the greatest vulnerability. I have been very concerned about America's 361 seaports as a point in which terrorist activities and materials could be brought into the country.

I would extend the unemployment benefits. Many people have been weeks and weeks without being able to find a job no matter how hard they search.

None of that was shared with the American people. And so we went to war, not only on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that we may or may not find, but we went to war without the knowledge of what the full consequences would be.

This may be heresy to admit, but it's the record.

It's fundamentally unfair to have so much of the tax relief go to so few. And it is a 10-year tax plan rather than one, as mine, focused on the next two years, which in my opinion is the critical time to jumpstart the economy.

What the president is insisting upon are not new ideas, ... Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.

admiring of the diplomatic skills that President Bush has displayed throughout this incident. He was able to keep the matter contained, keep it within appropriate diplomatic channels and avoid this incident from becoming a major source of rupture of the US-China relationship.

People might have disagreed with him, but they recognized that his views came from a deep and creative mind.

I have had national security background, 10 years on the Intelligence Committee, the last two years as chair.

We need to make is to strengthen the position of the director of the CIA.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a rest-of-your-life decision, ... I have loved public service, and I have loved being in the United States Senate serving the people of Florida. The question is is this what I wish to do for the rest of my life or are there other things I want to accomplish.

Today 80 percent of all the oil that comes out of the Gulf is from 1,000 feet or more and today almost a third of it is more than 5,000 feet below the surface. What hasn't happened is the safety and the ability to respond to a negative event such as this blowout, has been far outrun by the technology of drilling itself. We need to close that gap.

The premature conclusion of our presidential campaign was a great disappointment, ... However, it was not without its rewards. I am proud of the issues we raised, which are now becoming the central issues of debate in the presidential campaign.

I would give relief from the first $10,000 of the payroll tax. I would allow small businesses to accelerate depreciation so they would have an incentive to buy now rather than defer. I would also give to the states $40 billion of relief.

Education needs to be a national priority, particularly getting class sizes down and hiring more teachers and helping with school construction, ... He's been emphasizing the importance of a patient's bill of rights for those people who get their health care from an HMO (health maintenance organization) and a prescription medication benefit. These are not ideas that just were sprung on in the last few days.

With terrorist groups like al Qaeda, you can't learn what you want to learn about their capabilities and their future plans by taking a picture of it, and they've learned not to use the telephone.

I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth.

I keep lists of names of people that I have met, a list of things to do day by day as well as a log of how my time is consumed throughout the day. It's a very important part of my personal discipline.

Gen. Tommy Franks told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq - a war more than a year away.

As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

The American people should be informed about what kind of capability terrorists have inside the United States. They should be informed of why we are not using information to do a more effective job of dealing with terrorists.

is a continuation of the pattern of the last seven months -- a pattern of delay and excessive use of national security standards to deny the people the knowledge of their vulnerability.

By continuing to classify that information so that it's not available to the American people, the American people have been denied important information for their own protection, for the protection of the communities,

This president failed to tell the American people what he knew about the consequences of military victory in Iraq,

The attacks of September 11th could have been prevented if the right combination of skill, cooperation, creativity and some good luck had been brought to the task.

First out of the box was John Kerry, whose statement was sent out at 1001 p.m. EDT. Kerry said he was disappointed ... brought an important perspective to this campaign that will be missed.

We've just had a case in which some of our important national secrets have been stolen over a period of 15 years,