In a piece about how John Kerry's four months in Vietnam have driven a two-year presidential campaign, Mark Steyn echos a point I made in my previous post on this topic. He writes:
The one thing the Democratic Party owed America this campaign season was a candidate credible on the current war. The Democrats needed their own Tony Blair, a bloke who's a big socialist pantywaist when it comes to health and education and the other nanny-state hooey but believes in robust projection of military force in the national interest.There's a reason John Kerry talks more about his four months in Vietnam than his twenty years in the Senate. If only the American left could field a man with Tony Blair's capabilities -- actually, I'm sure such men exist, but they'd never be able to win in the primaries.John Kerry fails that test. If you wanted to pick a candidate on the wrong side of every major defense and foreign policy question of the last two decades, you would be hard put to find anyone with judgment as comprehensively poor as Mr. Kerry: total up his votes and statements on everything from Grenada to the Gulf war, Saddam to the Sandinistas, the Cold War to missile defense to every major weapons system of the 1980s and '90s. He called them all wrong.
But that's not how the Democratic Party muscle saw John Kerry. Since the notion of a credible war president wasn't important to them, they looked at the war on terror merely as a Bush wedge issue to be neutralized. And they figured their best shot at neutralizing it was Lt. Kerry on a Swift boat.Well put. The Democrats aren't actually concerned with winning the War on Terror, they're just interested in making sure that a Democrat gets elected president. Everything else is just details.
(HT: Donald Sensing.)
I would have considered voting for Joe Lieberman. But the anti-America freaks got a hold of the primary process.
Stupid Dems.
Mark Steyn: "to missile defense to every major weapons system of the 1980s and '90s. He called them all wrong."
Umm.. no.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/weapons.asp
meep: "anti-America freaks"
Anti-America freaks? Please.. put down the crack pipe.
Mark: Yeah, Mark Steyn definitely should have included an additional 5,000 words on the intricacies of the votes Kerry made, which ultimately were in favor of killing essential weapons systems. This kind of nit-picking is pointless, and Snopes is very good at it when it comes to politics.
MW: Interesting commentary for part 3. Although I knew that Kerry had a poor voting record, I was not aware it was to this extent.
Personally, I keyed much more off of his shaky public comments on various hot issues, such as Abortion:
"A Catholic who supports abortion rights and has taken heat from some in the church hierarchy for his stance, Kerry told the paper, "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."
AND
"I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist," he continued in the interview. "We have separation of church and state in the United States of America."
In one fell swoop he so much as admitted that he has no personal or moral grounding for his governmental judgements, nor does he take his own supposedly important faith, seriously.
He also came off sounding like an uneducated dope espousing this myth of separation of church and state.
I've seen some sides of Kerry that I like, and some of GW that I do not like. That being said, we need serious leadership that won't waver on important issues. That's why Kerry is just not a viable choice for me.
MW: "Yeah, Mark Steyn definitely should have included an additional 5,000 words on the intricacies of the votes Kerry made, which ultimately were in favor of killing essential weapons systems. This kind of nit-picking is pointless, and Snopes is very good at it when it comes to politics."
Okay, I guess not approving appropriations bills in times of budget deficits is a vote to kill essential weapons systems.
This isn't nitpicking, it's important details of the vote that Republicans want everyone to not pay attention to. They just like the sound bite: "Kerry voted to kill weapons systems"
From Snopes article: "Maintaining, as is the case here, that a Senator who voted "nay" on one year's defense appropriations bill therefore voted to "kill" a variety of specific weapons systems is like claiming that any Congressman who has ever voted against a defense appropriations bill has therefore also voted to abolish the U.S. military."
I guess it also doesn't matter that George H. W. Bush called for cancelling the Apache AH-64 program..
.. or when Secretary of Defense Cheney complained to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was being "forced" to spend money on unneeded weapons such as the M-1, the F-14, and the F-16.
So was it nitpicking by Snopes or is the Mark Steyn glossing over relevant details?
Oops.. drop the "the" from the last sentence of my previous post.
Mark: That's the deal with print publications, they've only got so much space. Are the details relevant? Sure. But does anyone have the patience to wade through them all? Not really. Do they change the essential foundation of Kerry's votes? Nope.
MW: "Are the details relevant? Sure. But does anyone have the patience to wade through them all? Not really. Do they change the essential foundation of Kerry's votes? Nope."
Oh.. so lack of patience takes precedence over making a case that tells the whole story?
Essential foundation? What are you talking about? Kerry voted against some appropriations bills (in a time of deficits, I might add)... not weapons systems.
Two of the three bills often cited.. S. 3189, H.R. 5803, and H.R. 2126 were on House-Senate conference committee reports for defense appropriations bills.
Mark: That's what Congress does, they appropriate money for programs. Voting against the money is voting against the program.
MW: Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago.
The Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War was over. Cuts must be examined in context.
Republicans also criticize Kerry for voting, in 1995, to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget. Do you know what that cut was about? The Air Force's National Reconnaissance Office had appropriated that much money to operate a spy satellite that, as things turned out, it never launched. So the Senate passed an amendment rescinding the money—not to cancel a program, but to get a refund on a program that the NRO had canceled.
In 1991, Kerry opposed an amendment to impose an arbitrary 2 percent cut in the military budget. In 1992, he opposed an amendment to cut Pentagon intelligence programs by $1 billion. In 1994, he voted against a motion to cut $30.5 billion from the defense budget over the next five years and to redistribute the money to programs for education and the disabled. That same year, he opposed an amendment to postpone construction of a new aircraft carrier. In 1996, he opposed a motion to cut six F-18 jet fighters from the budget. In 1999, he voted against a motion to terminate the Trident II missile. (Interestingly, the F-18 and Trident II are among the weapons systems that the RNC claims Kerry opposed.)
But whatever. These are just details.. that people don't have patience for. What a crock.
Mark: Sigh. You've apparently done a lot of research into this, and I don't have the time or inclination to argue the details. What's your point? That Kerry's a hawk? That Kerry isn't one of the weakest Democrats on national defense? That Kerry won't sell the farm to buy some "allies" we don't need? It's no coincidence that Kerry isn't touting his 20 years in the Senate to bolster his national defense record and that he has to go back to Vietnam for credibility.
MW: My point is that the RNC's claims about Kerry being soft on defense (by his voting record) are anything but truthful.
P.S. That point isn't just for the RNC.. but for everyone else who believes the "Kerry voted to kill weapons systems" line.
The truth is in the details.. the spin is in the soundbites.
Mark: Sound-bites are important.
Soundbites can be truthful... but the one about Kerry voting to kill weapons systems is not.
Soundbites are fine when they don't distort the truth.
DECORATED VETS EXPOSE KERRY
Decorated vets expose John Kerry as a FRAUD AND UNFIT TO COMMAND
220 OUT OF 229 SWIFT BOAT VETERANS CONDEMN KERRY AS UNFIT TO COMMAND
Many of the group were wounded in combat and are highly decorated veterans. They are resisting the attempt by John Kerry and the Democrats to suppress their side of the story and reveal the truth.
Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann (ret.), founder and chairman of the organization, said, "We purchased with our blood and service the right to be heard, to set the record straight about our unit, and to tell the TRUTH about John Kerry's military service record."
INCREDIBLY, THE ENTIRE CHAIN OF COMMAND CONDEMNS KERRY AS UNFIT TO COMMAND.
All the Swift Boat veterans "personally" knew Kerry and signed a letter with their firsthand eyewitness accounts.
http://www.swiftvets.com
DO YOU BELIEVE KERRY WHO HAS A HISTORY OF "LYING" OR 220 DECORATED VETS???
IT'S KERRY VS. 220 DECORATED VETS. DO THE MATH
http://www.swiftvets.com
http://kerry-04.org/war/shipmates.php
http://www.powmiafamiliesagainstjohnkerry.com
http://www.kerrylied.com
http://www.wintersoldier.com
http://www.vnsfvetakerry.com
http://www.kerryoniraq.com
http://www.kerrycore.com/
http://www.vetsagainstkerry.org
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com
http://www.25thaviation.org/johnkerry/
http://www.firefightersforbush.com/
http://www.usvetdsp.com/jf_kerry.htm
http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/000314.html
http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=20040515063551324
http://www.hanoijohnkerry.com/petitiontext.html
http://swift1.he.net/~swiftvet/index.php
http://www.strangecosmos.com/images/content/16574.jpg
http://www.stopjohn.com/movies/hanoi-john.htm
Actually no... not the entire chain of command proclaims that Kerry is unfit for command.
From: http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/swift.asp
"How well all of these men knew John Kerry is questionable, and discrepancies between how some of them described Kerry thirty-five years ago and how they describe him today suggest that their opinions are largely based upon political differences rather than objective assessments of Kerry's military record. For example, Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman is quoted above, yet the Los Angeles Times reported:
. . . Hoffman and Kerry had few direct dealings in Vietnam. A Los Angeles Times examination of Navy archives found that Hoffman praised Kerry's performance in cabled messages after several river skirmishes.1"
JP:He (Kerry) also came off sounding like an uneducated dope espousing this myth of separation of church and state.
And you come off sounding like a right-wing nut.
>>>220 OUT OF 229 SWIFT BOAT VETERANS CONDEMN KERRY AS UNFIT TO COMMAND>INCREDIBLY, THE ENTIRE CHAIN OF COMMAND CONDEMNS KERRY AS UNFIT TO COMMAND.>All the Swift Boat veterans "personally" knew Kerry and signed a letter with their firsthand eyewitness accounts.