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Kerry on the Record: Defense and Intelligence agencies

Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004

Sen. John Forbes Kerry, D-Mass., in his “vision for a better America” manifesto, “A Call to Service,” may have unwittingly named his own poison when it comes to his record on defense:
“There’s one thing you cannot take away from President Bush: He did establish beyond a shadow of a doubt the credibility of U.S. threats to use military force against our enemies. Our strength is a national asset. ...”
Some critics wonder what the value of that national asset of strength would be today if Kerry had had his way with the defense cuts he has supported over the decades.
There are those who suggest that in the era of the post-Cold War, the senator from Massachusetts was simply one of a host of politicians anxious to collect a so-called “peace dividend” and pass the savings along to worthy social programs.
Not so, observe other Kerry watchers, who race to point out that it was during the height of the Cold War that he fought against the entire strategic modernization effort proposed by President Reagan, including the Peacekeeper, B-1 and B-2 bombers, the Trident submarine and D-5 missile.
Furthermore, in those dangerous times Kerry was a proponent of the nuclear freeze, which would have spelled permanent obsolescence for U.S. nuclear forces – at a time when the Evil Empire’s nuclear forces were becoming most formidable.
And it wasn’t some blind party loyalty thing. Democratic luminaries such as Sam Nunn, Al Gore, Norman Dicks, Sonny Montgomery and Les Aspin, to name a few, agreed with Ronald Reagan.
Kerry reached his anti-defense stride in those days when “The Gipper” was looking to build up American muscle and back the Soviet Union into the disastrous catch-up game that some suggest caused the collapse of the communist powerhouse.
For example, Kerry opposed the U.S. cruise missiles and Pershing missiles based in England, Germany, Holland and Italy – but it was just these tools of war and deterrence that helped bring on eventual victory in the Cold War.
Some suggest that the Kerry mindset was a tenacious carryover from those halcyon post-Vietnam peacenik days when he was testifying on Capitol Hill that in his opinion communism posed no threat to the United States.
In April 1972 when Kerry moved into Massachusetts’ 5th District to run for Congress a second time, he won the Democratic nomination but lost the election to the Republican.
Still very much riding his anti-war wave, the young candidate had promised to cut defense spending. On what he’d do if elected to Congress, Kerry said he would “bring a different kind of message to the president.” He said he would vote against military appropriations.
Apparently with the Vietnam War still alive and well in Southeast Asia, the electorate was not quite ready for Kerry’s premature peace dividend.
Not to be dissuaded, when Kerry finally made his entrée into politics as Michael Dukakis’ lieutenant governor (1983-1985), he and his boss linked up with a liberal group dedicated to the proposition of slashing defense.
Beating the Drum
Sitting on the board of the Jobs With Peace Campaign, Kerry worked to bring into fruition the credo of that organization, which existed solely to drum up public support for cutting the defense budget.
There was no stopping Kerry’s assault on the Pentagon. When first running for his Senate seat in 1984, Kerry explained carefully that he was firmly against such mainstays of the defense establishment as the B-1 bomber, B-2 stealth bomber, AH-64 Apache helicopter, Patriot missile, the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Aegis air-defense cruiser, and the Trident missile system.
He also ran on a platform of cutting back on the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Tomahawk cruise missile, and the F-16. The average newspaper-reading American, of course, recognizes these systems as the veritable tip of the spear that not only crushed Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War but also smashed the Taliban in Afghanistan and punched through to Baghdad in the second Gulf War.
Once in the Senate, where he has been entrenched for the last 19 years, Kerry amassed an impressive record of defense bashing.
Recently, GOP chairman Ed Gillespie in an address to the Republican National Committee ticked off vote after vote in which Kerry sought to cut the nation’s defense budget:
• In 1991 Kerry voted to cut defense spending by 2 percent. Only 21 other senators voted with Kerry, and the defense cut was defeated.
• In 1991, Kerry voted to cut over $3 billion from defense and shift the funds to social programs. Only 27 senators joined Kerry in voting for the defense cut.
• In 1992, Kerry voted to cut $6 billion from defense. Republicans and Democrats alike successfully blocked this attempt to cut defense spending.
• In 1993, Kerry voted against increased defense spending for a military pay raise.
• In 1993, Kerry introduced a plan to cut the number Of Navy submarines and their crews; reduce tactical fighter wings in the Air Force; terminate the Navy’s coastal mine-hunting ship program; force the retirement of 60,000 members of the armed forces in one year; and reduce the number of light infantry units in the Army down to one. The plan was DOA.
• In 1995, Kerry voted to freeze defense spending for seven years, cutting over $34 billion from defense. Only 27 other senators voted with Kerry.
• In 1996, Kerry introduced a bill to cut Defense Department funding by $6.5 billion. Kerry’s bill had no co-sponsors and never came to a floor vote.
• In 1996, Kerry voted yes on a fiscal 1996 budget resolution – a defense freeze that would have frozen defense spending for the next seven years and transferred the $34.8 billion in savings to education and job training. The resolution was rejected 28-71.
Such votes add up to “a 20-year record of being weak on the military,” says former Republican National Chairman Richard Bond. “To this day, the defining issue of this election is that America is under attack. I do not believe in the end Americans will vote for someone with a soft worldview.”

Attacking US Intelligence Agencies

Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004

Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was lamenting on CBS’s “Face the Nation” the lack of money the intelligence establishment received despite its vital role in securing the nation:
“And the tragedy is at the moment, the single most important weapon for the United States of America is intelligence. It’s the single most important weapon in this particular war.”
The burning issue then and now: If intelligence is the weapon paramount to security, why did Kerry vote to cut intelligence appropriations over the last decade?
On the record these days, Kerry explains only that his votes and proposals were attempts to change the culture of our intelligence gathering:
“I was on the Intelligence Committee. What we were trying to do, some of us, was push the funding not into technical means. There was a fascination always with satellites, listening devices, not with human intelligence. I’ve always been somebody who has felt that we needed human intelligence, that’s our failure.”
But such a fine line is not so apparent from the record.
• In 1994, Kerry proposed and voted to cut $1 billion from intelligence. Specifically, he proposed cutting that $1 billion from the budgets of the National Foreign Intelligence Program and from Tactical Intelligence, while freezing their budgets. The amendment was soundly defeated.
The rub here is that the major component of the National Foreign Intelligence program is the FBI’s nationwide counterterrorism programs. Potentially affected were scores of the bureau’s field offices, which serve as vital components of foreign counterintelligence and counterterrorism within the United States, economic espionage, and ANSIR (the Awareness of National Security Issues and Response program).
Furthermore, Tactical Intelligence is the entity responsible for providing vital, time-sensitive support for commanders and soldiers on the ground.
• In 1995, Kerry was at it again, voting to cut $80 million from the FBI’s budget and introducing a bill that would have reduced the overall intelligence budget by $1.5 billion by the year 2000. Without targeting specific programs, Kerry’s bill sought to reduce the intelligence budget by $300 million in each of fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000.
Not Even Kennedy, Leahy or Boxer Would Touch It
Fortunately, there were no co-sponsors of the 1995 bill, which never made it to the floor for a vote.
• In 1997, Kerry questioned the size of the intelligence community during a speech on the floor of the Senate:
“[W]hy it is that our vast intelligence apparatus, built to sustain America in the long twilight struggle of the Cold War continues to grow at an exponential rate? Now that that struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow even as government resources for new and essential priorities fall far short of what is necessary? Why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to roll on even as every other government bureaucracy is subject to increasing scrutiny and, indeed, to reinvention?”
Ignoring His Own Warnings
What makes Kerry's record even more unfathomable is the fact that he was so savvy to the rising tide of terrorism, in all its forms.
In his 1997 tome, “The New War,” Kerry notes his distress that in the case of the first attack on the World Trade Center, “all these terrorists were apprehended after the fact.”
“We were not sufficiently prepared for the first real wave of terror that broke out in America and we are not yet prepared for the next,” Kerry adds. “Along with crime, commerce, and communication, terror is going global.”
In a fit of remarkable prescience, Kerry writes years before the second attack on the WTC: “The terrorists of tomorrow will be better armed and organized. It will take only one mega-terrorist event in any of the great cities of the world to change the world in a single day.”
Nowadays on his Web site the candidate says: “John Kerry understands that intelligence information is the key to disrupting and dismantling terrorist organizations and that we need to improve our intelligence capabilities, both domestically and internationally, in order to win the war on global terrorism.”

As Kerry is fond of saying, “It’s time to move on.”