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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (622177)	9/11/2004 6:42:47 AM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Senator Zell Miller (D-GA), an ex Marine, is angry that the party he spent a lifetime helping to build has gone so far to the left that it is barely recognizable. Miller attacked the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), in terms that no Republican would dare to do. He gave a litany of the weapons systems that Kerry voted against in his two decades in the United States Senate. The Kerry apologists, who were all over the media the morning after the Miller speech, tried to suggest that when a Senator votes against a bill containing a weapons system it may be because he has some other problem with the bill that has nothing to do with the weapons system. Therefore, you see, Senator Kerry really isn't against all of those weapons after all. You have to understand these votes in context, so they told us. Nice try. However, my Internet angel Alex Mulkern unearthed a campaign flyer from Lt. Governor John Kerry's campaign for the United States Senate in 1984. It is priceless. In this flyer, Kerry says of the Reagan defense buildup "the biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense. Americans feel threatened by the prospect of war." Kerry goes on to say, \ldblquote...our national priorities become more and more distorted as the share of our country's resources devoted to human needs diminishes." Then Kerry suggests there is a better alternative. He lists weapons system after weapons system that he would cancel and the amount of money that would be "saved" by canceling them. Among those which would have been put on the chopping block back in 1984 are as follows: The MX Missile. Cancel. Savings: $5 Billion. The B-1 Bomber. Cancel. Savings: $8 Billion Anti-satellite system. Cancel. Savings: $99 Million Star Wars. Cancel. Savings: $1.3 Billion Tomahawk Missile. Reduce by 50%. Savings: $294 Million AH-64 Helicopter. Cancel. Savings: $1.4 Billion Division Air Defense. Cancel. Savings: $638 Million The Patriot Air Defense Missile. Cancel. Savings: $1.1 Billion Aegis Air Defense. Cancel. Savings: $400 Million Battleship reactivation. Cancel. Savings: $453 Million AV 88 vertical take off and landing plane. Cancel. Savings: $1.0 Billion F-15 fighter aircraft. Cancel. Savings: $2.3 Billion F-14A fighter aircraft. Cancel. Savings: $1.0 Billion F-14B fighter aircraft. Cancel. Savings: $286 Million Phoenix air-to-air missile. Cancel: Savings: $431 Million Sparrow air-to-air missile. Cancel. Savings: $264 Million So there you have it. Did Zell Miller exaggerate? Before John Kerry was even elected Senator he was calling for the elimination of some of the most effective weapons systems we have. Kerry said in this flyer: "If we don't need the MX and the B-1 or these other weapons systems, there is no excuse for casting even one vote for unnecessary weapons of destruction and as your Senator I never will" He got that right. This was back in 1984. Mikhail Gorbachev had just come to power. It was Gorbachev and his generals who concluded that they could not keep up with weapons development in the USA, especially the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), and that is one of the reasons that the Soviets threw in the towel. Imagine, 20 years later, if the Kerry view had prevailed, we would still be facing a menacing super power known as the Soviet Union. If the Soviets didn't have to compete with all of those sophisticated weapons systems, they would be fighting on to this day. The Baltics would still be Soviet Republics, as would Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia. The Berlin Wall would likely still be up. Poland and the satellite nations would not be free. Get the picture? Zell Miller, in his litany of weapons systems which Senator Kerry voted against, said he did by no means exhaust the list. He said the list went on and on. True enough because in the past couple of decades we have developed many more systems which Senator Kerry could be against -- weapons systems which have made this nation the only remaining super power. I am not one who believes in giving the Pentagon everything it wishes. The Pentagon is a bureaucratic structure just as much as Health and Human Services is. There is as much waste and abuse in the Pentagon as there is in other areas of government. Had Senator Kerry gone after waste and duplication and other areas of misfeasance in the Pentagon he might well have served his nation well. But in opposing every weapons system we have produced since the middle 1980s, Senator Kerry displays a glaring weakness -- one which is fair game as we get into the serious part of the campaign. No wonder the Democrats are now trying to say that Senator Miller is mentally unbalanced. They can't have voters examine what Kerry said. If they do they will find the weakness Zell Miller spoke about and they may well come to the same conclusion the Senator has come to, namely the protection of his family comes before his political party. (Paul M. Weyrich is chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.) Copyright 2004, Free Congress Foundation