"Flippidy, flippidy, flop!"
MORE OLD KERRY STATEMENTS ON REDEPLOYMENT
[08/18 12:49 PM]
NRO
The Bush campaign researchers must be hip-deep in Lexis-Nexis transcripts by now.
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SEN. JOHN KERRY: "The troops of the United States of America are overextended. Their deployments are too long. The families are hurting at home because they lose money from the private sector when they're called up, and they get paid less in the military, and nobody makes it up to them. The fact is if we are going to maintain this level of commitment on a global basis - for the moment we have to, because of what's happened - we need an additional two divisions. One is a combat division, and one is a support division. And that's the responsible thing to do. I've also said, responsibly, that's temporary, because I intend to be a president who goes back to the United Nations, rejoins the community of nations, brings other boots on the ground to help us in the world, and reduces the overall need for deployment of American forces in the globe - and I mean North Korea, Germany and the rest of the world where we can begin to set up a new architecture of participation of other countries."<font color=black> (ABC News/The [Manchester] Union Leader Democrat Presidential Candidates Debate, Manchester, NH, 1/22/04)
EDYE TARBOX: "Thank you. Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts gets about the sixth biggest chunk of defense spending. Given the pressure nationwide to take a peace dividend and cut defense spending, how do you propose to keep defense jobs in our state?"
SEN. JOHN KERRY: <font color=blue>"Well I intend to try to keep defense jobs in the state the very way I have been doing it. During the course of the last few weeks I have been working diligently on behalf of those defense programs which we ought to have. Those that makes sense for a strong defense for this country and that are realistic in terms of the new threat, as defined by the changes in Europe, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. ... I think we ought to stay on the cutting edge, and I think we ought to be doing an enormous amount more to guarantee research and development. We've seen a horrible shift in the last few years away from civilian R & D into military R & D and R & D that doesn't make sense. But we should not be building a B-2 bomber for $858 million dollars for one bomber. We should not be building more MX missiles to deal with the Soviet Union, and we ought to be making savings in our troops in Europe. We're currently paying for 300,000 troops to be in Germany to save the Germans from the Soviet troops that they're paying to leave then to stay. It doesn't make sense and I think we could help Massachusetts by using that money here."<font color=black> (Democrat Senatorial Candidates Debate, Boston, MA, 11/3/90)
I suspect this kind of stuff makes the average voter think that if Bush said the sun was going to set in the west, Kerry would insist that was wrong and obviously it was going to set in the east. |
