It is an honor to be banned from a rightwing extremist thread. They never listen to facts anyway. Just censor them.
Putting It In Context
By PERRY BACON JR.; DOUGLAS WALLER
Sunday, Feb. 29, 2004
A periodic look at the charges being made against the presidential candidates — and the facts behind them
THE CHARGES: "He's voted to cancel weapons programs like the Stealth bomber, the [M-1] tank, the Apache helicopter, the MX missile...He's voted to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence community."
--ED GILLESPIE, Republican National Committee chairman, accusing John Kerry of being soft on defense
THE CONTEXT: Kerry did fight the MX, voted to cut funds for missile defense and the B-2 Stealth bomber, and proposed cutting the intelligence budget $300 million a year from 1996 to 2000. But it was the first President Bush who halted production of the MX, and Republicans including Senator John McCain have opposed building more B-2s. On intelligence, Kerry says he wanted to scale back money for expensive spy satellites and put more into human intelligence. Another G.O.P. charge: that Kerry voted 10 times in 1990 against weapons like the F-15, F-16, Patriot missile and M-1 tank. Actually it was only one vote — against an appropriations bill that funded all these weapons. Dick Cheney, then Defense Secretary, also wanted to reduce funding for these weapons. |
