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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (9625)	1/31/2004 6:15:10 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 10965

Dean Tackles Kerry's Record washingtonpost.com Old, New Front-Runners Talk Health Care in S.C. Debate By David S. Broder and John F. Harris Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A01 GREENVILLE, S.C., Jan. 29 -- Howard Dean charged Thursday that John F. Kerry had not passed any of the 11 health care bills he sponsored in the Senate, as the dethroned leader in the Democratic presidential race challenged the new front-runner in a televised debate. The Massachusetts senator replied that if Dean understood Congress better, he would know that Kerry -- like any other senator -- often saw his ideas come to fruition in bills that did not carry his name. He cited as examples the Family and Medical Leave Act; a bill guaranteeing parity in Medicare treatment for mental illness; protection for veterans suffering from exposure to Agent Orange; and the extension of health insurance to children in all 50 states, including Vermont. Dean dismissed that response as "what I consider a real Washington answer," suggesting the senator was boasting of legislation rather than results. "With me, you'll get results," Dean said, "because I'm a governor and I've done it." The Dean-Kerry exchange ranked among the more energetic moments in a 90-minute forum marked by generally polite, policy-oriented comments. Even though Kerry prevailed in the Iowa caucuses Jan. 19 and the New Hampshire primary Tuesday -- making him the man to beat for the Democratic presidential nomination -- Dean was the only one to challenge him directly. Carried nationally by MSNBC and moderated by Tom Brokaw of NBC, the debate among the seven hopefuls came five days before South Carolina and six other states vote on the 2004 campaign's biggest day so far. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who calls South Carolina a must-win primary, allowed Kerry to disclaim a statement earlier in the campaign that it was a "mistake" for Democrats to believe they had to break President Bush's hold on the South to win in November. Kerry told Brokaw, "I've always said I could compete in the South and we can win in the South." That, he said, is why he is endorsed by retiring Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and Rep. James E. Clyburn, the state's highest-ranking African American official. In an earlier debate in New Hampshire, Kerry said Democrats had made "a mistake" with electoral college strategies that began by "looking south." He noted then that Al Gore could have won the presidency in 2000 simply by carrying traditionally competitive states such as West Virginia and New Hampshire, without winning any southern states. Edwards, called on next, passed up the opportunity to challenge Kerry. Instead, he said it would be an "enormous mistake" for any Democrat to write off the South and its "enormous" stock of electoral votes. "No Democrat has been elected president without carrying five southern states," he said. Dean, who shook up his campaign staff Wednesday, said there was nothing inconsistent about his turning command over to Roy Neel, a longtime aide to Gore and a lobbyist for telephone companies in private life. Although he has criticized "Washington insiders" throughout his campaign, Dean defended Neel as someone who had "kept faith with his ethics pledge." Asked by Brokaw how long they planned to stay in the race without a victory, the other four candidates -- retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) and civil rights activist Al Sharpton of New York -- said they expect or intend to break into a winner's circle next week. The Iraq war dominated large parts of the evening, but there were few disagreements among the candidates. Instead they competed to see who could be most forceful in denouncing the Bush administration's alleged mishandling of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. Kerry and Dean said they were troubled by Vice President Cheney's prewar visits to the Central Intelligence Agency. Dean said Cheney "sat with middle-level CIA operatives and berated them because he didn't like their intelligence reports." Kerry, though he voted for a resolution authorizing the war, said, "There's an enormous question about the exaggeration by this administration." Edwards joined Dean in supporting an independent commission to examine inaccurate intelligence about Iraqi mass-weapons capability, as well as possible administration misstatements on the subject. Lieberman however, said legitimate questions about the Bush administration's handling of intelligence and postwar planning "have all unfortunately given a bad name to a just war. But the fact is, Saddam Hussein himself was a weapon of mass destruction." Clark found several occasions to stress his theme of "leadership," saying that as an outsider, "I'll be the solution to the problem. If the American people like what's been going on in Washington, then they should vote for people who have been there, been part of the Washington scene. . . . I haven't been."

To: American Spirit who wrote (9625)	1/31/2004 6:15:55 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 10965

Disturbing discrepancies By Peter Huessy The media have begun the process of anointing Sen. John Kerry our next president. The stories of his likeness to another John from Massachusetts — Kennedy the president — are now sprouting like daffodils during the spring. The relaxed humor is being talked about, the war experience in Vietnam likened to former President Kennedy in the South Pacific and PT 109. The candidate, we are assured, has gravitas and foreign and domestic experience, and will reach out and be friends to Old Europe. The meanness of the Bush administration will be but a fleeting memory once Mr. Kerry and his liberal boys get a hold on Foggy Bottom and the five-sided puzzle palace once known as the Pentagon. Anyway, that's their story and they're sticking to it. There is one very big problem. The story is baloney. Kennedy was in fact for a strong national defense. He was no friend of communists anywhere. In fact, he campaigned to the right of Vice President Richard Nixon on security issues in the 1960 election, running around worried about a missile and bomber gap with the Soviet Union that did not yet exist. Mr. Kerry, on the other hand, cares about as much for national security as a giraffe. From his first days in Congress, the Massachusetts liberal has been to the very far left of the political spectrum in his national security views. During the height of the Cold War, Mr. Kerry opposed the entire strategic modernization effort proposed by President Reagan — the Peacekeeper, B-1 and B-2 bombers, the Trident submarine and D-5 missile — even though his Democratic colleagues Sam Nunn, Al Gore, Norman Dicks, Sonny Montgomery and Les Aspin, for example, sided with Mr. Reagan. He supported the nuclear freeze, which would have placed U.S. nuclear forces in permanent obsolescence just as the Soviet strategic nuclear forces were becoming most formidable. Mr. Kerry opposed the deployment of the INF missiles in Europe that Mr. Reagan successfully achieved. The ground-launched cruise missiles and Pershings based in England, Germany, Holland and Italy turned out to be one of the turning points of the Cold War, and hastened the end of the Soviet empire. Mr. Kerry was not only wrong on this critical issue, but opposed the non-strategic modernization of the defense budget as well. The purchase of additional C-5 airplanes by Mr. Reagan turned out to be critical to rescuing U.S. allies in trouble later in the decade — and Mr. Kerry was opposed to that as well. Mr. Kerry says he stood up to Mr. Nixon on Vietnam. Well, since Mr. Nixon inherited a war the two previous administrations had no idea how to win or were unwilling to even try, and since Mr. Nixon's war plan was to how to withdraw American troops, and since Mr. Nixon did in fact withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam quite rapidly, what was it that Mr. Kerry believes he stood up to Mr. Nixon about? Did Mr. Kerry oppose Mr. Nixon on withdrawing forces from Vietnam, or was the senator telling us that what he wanted us to do was surrender? Mr. Kerry said he opposed Mr. Reagan in Central America. Indeed, Mr. Kerry supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and their war against their own people and against their neighbors. Not once did Mr. Kerry denounce Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega and his communist thug friends, or their sponsors in Cuba and the Soviet Union. Indeed, even after becoming a member of the Senate, Mr. Kerry couldn't shake his firm belief that communism posed no threat to the United States, as he stated in the early 1970s when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When Mr. Reagan rescued the wonderful people of El Salvador from the ugly clutches of the FMLN — and their land mines in the coffee plantations, their car bombs, their massacres of elected officials — Mr. Kerry was on the wrong side again, working to stop U.S. assistance to the government of El Salvador. When President Carter proposed sending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the communist government of Nicaragua, Mr. Kerry was not one to raise a protest as his fellow Democrats got in line to sign up and send the dough to Managua. When the Carter administration was busy pushing the Shah of Iran out of power and calling the Ayatollah Khomeini "a saint," did Mr. Kerry stand up and say this is wrong? Later in the 1980s, Mr. Kerry sneered at Mr. Reagan's proposed reductions in nuclear weapons, saying such proposals were for show. When the INF and START treaties eliminated and reduced whole classes of nuclear weapons, Mr. Kerry sneered that Mr. Reagan was still wedded to missile defenses. In the early 1990s, Mr. Kerry jumped and applauded the elimination of missile defense development and the wholesale elimination of hundreds of billions in the defense budgets' five-year plans, and the procurement holiday on which the Clinton administration embarked. In short, Mr. Kerry likes to pretend he would make the toughnationalsecurity choicesaspresident. Highly unlikely. He never made the tough choices when he was a senator. Peter Huessy is president of GeoStrategic Analysis and senior defense associate at the National Defense University Foundation. washtimes.com