Dear Members and Friends,

This week, two leading members of the United States Senate, Senator Carl Levin (MI) and Senator Jack Reed (RI), forwarded an amendment to take away funding of 50 million dollars, for the further deployment of ground based missiles and silos, from the upcoming 2006 defense budget. The Senators’ decision of limiting our defensive capability is against the voice of the American public and their public safety.

Developing and deploying a missile defense system requires redundancy and layers to create an effective capability that insures our public safety. To limit the numbers of defensive missiles and systems lowers our effectiveness, especially at the minimum numbers in place today to defend our entire country.

A long-range ballistic missile fired from North Korea needs to be negated and dissuaded. Our government needs to have the capability to fire multiple defensive missiles rather than one at an incoming warhead to give our country its best chance for survival and economic protection. Today, there are an estimated range of six to twelve North Korean nuclear weapons in place; and in the future, the North Koreans could have considerably more, as well as others.

As a nation, should we limit our public safety by not putting the adequate defensive protection in place? Would we limit our soldiers to one round of ammunition to defend themselves?

Our country has spoken on missile defense; and they want it and they want it now. Recently, an independent and national poll shows consistent and overwhelming support by the American public of 79% for missile defense. In addition the survey shows that 70% of Democrats, 70% of Independents and 90% of Republicans support missile defense.

I urge you to contact your local congressmen and senators on this amendment (A. 1492 of the 2006 defense budget – S. 1042).