From the outset, let me make it perfectly clear that I know you know this. But sometimes, I just like to use The Carpetbagger Report as an outlet for my frustration, even though I’m certain that my readers already are well aware of the information.
A few former co-workers of mine used to joke about “pushing the ‘rant’ button.” There’d be some topic that was particularly sensitive for one of us, and the mere mention of it would set us off on some endless tirade. The latest Bush TV ad, alas, pushed just such a button for me. I’ll feel a little better if I get some fact-checking off my chest, so indulge me for a minute, or just skip this post altogether.
John Kerry and his liberal allies in Congress want us to believe they’re strong on national defense. But the facts speak otherwise.
FACT: Just one year after the first World Trade Center attack, Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to cut our intelligence budgets by 6 billion dollars.
This isn’t fact; it’s lunacy. It’s intentionally dishonest and they know it, which makes it so much worse. The truth is Kerry proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget in 1995 (about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years), but congressional Republicans voted, at the same time, for a $3.8 billion to cut to the same budget. Indeed, Peter Goss, Bush’s hand-picked CIA director, wanted an even bigger cut to the same intelligence budget. By the logic of Bush’s latest ad, this means that congressional Republicans and his own director of central intelligence are “weak on national defense.” Not by my standards, but by Bush’s.
The next charge from the new Bush ad:
FACT: Over the past 20 years, they have fought to cancel or reduce 40 key weapons now being used by our troops in combat to protect them and America in the War on Terror.
This is a little vague in its attack, but is sounds a lot like the Zell Miller charge that Kerry opposed important weapons systems such as the M-1 tank, the Apache helicopter, the F-14, F-16, etc. Assuming this is the basis for the charge, the Bush campaign is being dishonest on two levels.
One, Kerry never voted against these weapons systems.
Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry’s committees.
This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and implied that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.
And two, Dick Cheney backed all of the same cuts to weapons systems that Kerry did — and then some.
[B]ack when Kerry cast these votes, Dick Cheney — who was the secretary of defense for George W. Bush’s father — was truly slashing the military budget. Here was Secretary Cheney, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 31, 1992: “Overall, since I’ve been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That’s the peace dividend. … And now we’re adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.”.
Cheney then lit into the Democratic-controlled Congress for not cutting weapons systems enough: “Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you’ve squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don’t fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You’ve directed me to buy more M1s, F14s, and F16s — all great systems … but we have enough of them.”
Again, by the Bush campaign’s own standards, this makes Dick Cheney “weak on national defense.”
The last charge from the latest Bush ad:
FACT: After voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq, they voted against funding our troops in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ah, yes, the famous $87 billion vote. That would be the one Bush threatened to veto nearly six months after he sent troops into battle without the resources they needed. (See earlier item about “projecting”)
And, finally, the ad’s closer:
How can John Kerry and his liberal allies protect us when they voted against what America needs to fight the War on Terror?
If there’s ever been an ad as recklessly dishonest as this one at the presidential level, I’ve certainly never seen it. As the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne said the other day:
A very intelligent political reporter I know said the other night that Republicans simply run better campaigns than Democrats. If I were given a free pass to stretch the truth to the breaking point, I could run a pretty good campaign, too.