Warren Rudman Quotations

This may sound trite, but bad things happen to good people, and when you're facing terrorism, natural disaster, you can have every wonderful plan in place, but I am a realist.

If you have a major disaster involving hundreds of thousands, or in this case millions of people, whether it be a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, the first 72 hours are going to be totally chaotic no matter what you plan to do.

Significant steps have been taken since 9-11 to protect out country here at home, but much remains to be done, Americans from across the political spectrum must come together to develop the next phase of our efforts to counter global terror.

If there were a major earthquake in Los Angeles, with bridges and highways and railroads and airports all shut down and huge buildings collapsing, I don't care how much planning you do, the first 72 hours is going to be chaotic.

The other thing about FEMA, my understanding is that it was supposed to move into the Department of Homeland Security... and be what it was, but also having a lot of lateral communication with all those others involved in that issue of homeland security.

And if you do all you can, that's all you can ever do.

And they will tell you unequivocally that if we have a chemical or biological attack or a nuclear attack anywhere in this country, they are unprepared to deal with it today, and that is of high urgency.

The two things that could have been better is number one, to get major military force into the community almost immediately to make sure that there was law and order. Number two, we had enough helicopters to airlift food into the centers of population and those places.

We have to make a determination of what the minimum standards are for police, fire and emergency services in all of America's major cities. Once we determine that, then we can decide what the funding is.

Everyone is going to have to step up to the plate.

The president's very right about one thing: When you have a disaster of that scale, whether it be natural or a terrorist attack, there's only one part of our entire government, state or local, that is equipped to handle it, and that's the U.S. military.

Well, it's taken a long time to get the Department of Homeland Security established. It's taken a long time for the Congress to decide how much it wanted to fund.

It was a bad idea, because I think that any government reorganization has to come in relatively small bites, or else you get indigestion.

We tend to pay attention to that which is the most current on our radar screen.

One of the things we stress is, you've got to get interoperability and communications, or else you're going to have disaster no matter what goes on.

If we have a disaster -- and we think it is quite probable in the next 20-25 years -- we're not prepared to deal with it,

He was somewhat of an enigma to many people. I'm not so sure he didn't get along, he just didn't mix a lot with people. He didn't seem to have a lot of friends.

Really, politics should stop at the door of that committee. I don't know whether Roberts is right or Rockefeller is right. But I do know that when you lose bipartisan oversight by that committee, you lose something very, very important.

marks the first significant step forward in a campaign for president by John McCain.

While we have put forth the best estimates so far on emergency responder needs, the nation must urgently develop a better framework and procedures to generate guidelines on national preparedness,

The problem the administration has is that the predicates it laid down for the war have not played out. That could spell political trouble for the president, there's no question.

We're not talking about creating a new bureaucracy. We're talking about taking a number of bureaucracies and consolidating them into one streamlined organization.

We are looking at all the accounting issues we have looked at all along, and at this point, we don't have any conclusions. We are still hoping to wrap up the investigation by the end of December, and if we don't make it we'll do it in January.

There is a very low probability we will find anything new. We might find some additional definition to some of the issues we have already reported on.

Both the Democratic and the Republican parties stand for equality of all people. We have no room in our party, it seems to me, for someone who writes the things that he's written in the last year.

There is nothing new and alarming that we have come across.

Washington, D.C., has a much greater risk than Manchester, N.H. They both need some level of funding, but they ought not to be done per capita. Congress is to blame for some of this.

a wide array of people over the last several months.

This country is big enough and strong enough to prepare for both.

The Republicans are very sensitive to the idea that the Democrats are attempting to embarrass the White House, even when there's a legitimate issue to look into.

It's my view that he is running for the reform party nomination for one reason and one reason alone: money -- a great deal of federal matching money which he would get.

I'm sorry to see anyone have to leave our party, but there comes a point where enough is enough,

If you talk to mayors, to governors, to police chiefs, they are just not ready, and we had better get ready,

I think all bets are off, ... Who knows what's next?

A great deal more that we can do, a lot that we can do to save people, to respond better, to make sure people are equipped better.

The blame for [the national debt] lies with the Congress and the President, with Democrats and Republicans alike, most all of whom have been unwilling to make the hard choices or to explain to the American people that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Supreme Court opinion notwithstanding, corporations are not defined as people under the Constitution, and free speech can hardly be called free when only the rich are heard.

What we found out with Katrina is that the country is still unable to deal with disaster, .. God forbid this happens in San Francisco.

Politics is too important to be left to politicians.