Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
[ kerry spot home | archives | email ]

Retired Capt. Larry Bailey of Vietnam Vets for the Truth speaks at the “John Kerry Lied” rally at Upper Senate Park, September 12, 2004.

Fred Kaplan's defense of Kerry's voting record and attack on Zell Miller is getting a lot of attention. (Glenn Kessler and Dan Morgan of the Washington Post made a similar argument Friday.) But their arguments are not as strong as they may appear at first glance.

Kaplan begins with the usual namecalling — Zell is stupid, Zell just reads what is put in front of him, he probably thinks the earth is flat, etc.:

In the case of Sen. Zell Miller's keynote address, "lies" might be too strong a word. Clearly not a bright man, Miller dutifully recited the talking points that his Republican National Committee handlers had typed up for him, though perhaps in a more hysterical tone than anyone might have anticipated. (His stumbled rantings in the interviews afterward, on CNN and MSNBC, brought to mind the flat-Earthers who used to be guests on The Joe Pyne Show.) Can a puppet tell lies? Perhaps not.

Then we get to the crux of his argument:

Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry's committees.

The argument that Kerry never voted against these systems is the same as saying Kerry never voted against the body armor for U.S. troops in the $87 billion Iraq-aid bill. Yes, Kerry did not vote specifically against this provision in the bill; he voted against the whole thing. He and his allies contend this argument is unfair, because Kerry did not vote against the specific provision.

At the time, Kerry wanted the $87 billion to be offset with tax hikes — or to use the preferred Democratic vernacular, "repealing the tax cuts for the richest Americans." But that proposal was never going to go anywhere. Anyone can have a preferred alternative — the NRO crowd would probably prefer the $87 billion be offset with cuts to farm subsidies and porky transportation projects — but one rarely gets exactly what one wants in life, or in legislation. The choice before John Kerry earlier this year was up or down, yes or no, should the troops in the field get this $87 billion or not. Kerry and Edwards said "no," and the two men have also insisted that if they were the deciding vote, they would have voted the same way. A Kerry aide later admitted to The New Yorker that the reason for this was the popularity of Howard Dean's antiwar stance.

Every defense-appropriations bill is going to have something that a lawmaker won't like. Defense experts debated the necessity of the Crusader artillery system for a long time. Many folks debated whether the Osprey plane would fly. Missile defense, the F-22, the Stryker armored vehicle, the DD-X — every major defense program has its supporters and detractors. But all the projects get rolled into one bill, and then lawmakers have to decide, up or down, whether to vote for it. There is no "maybe" button in the U.S. Senate, no "yes, but" key.

This is the kind of logic that leads one down the path to, "I actually voted for it before I voted against it."

In two of those three defense-appropriations bills, Kerry was still very much a minority position. The three bills cited by the Republicans that Kerry opposed passed 79 to 16, 80 to 17, and 59 to 39.

And DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe didn't exactly make a sterling defense of these votes back in February.

RNC CHAIR ED GILLESPIE: Was that an attack what I just said about his record?

MCAULIFFE: Sure, it is. You're trying to make this man — you're trying to make this man look weak on defense. We're not going to stand by and allow it.

GILLESPIE: I'm citing his policies.

MCAULIFFE: Well, let me tell you, John Kerry has had 6,500 votes in the United States Senate. He served for 19 years admirably in the Senate fighting for all different types of issues. He has supported every major defense build-up in this country. This man fought for our attack subs, our Black Hawk helicopters, he supported. He voted for an increase for military pay. Goodness gracious, I mean, John Kerry voted for the USS Ronald Reagan. This man has many votes that we can go to that shows he supports the defense of this country. We don't have to go back 19 years. We can go back two and a half years. There were le — legitimate debate about this president who went before the state of the union a year ago and misled the American public about an African nation tr — supposedly selling uranium yellow cake to Saddam Hussein. It turned out to be false. We now have a criminal investigation. If you read the reports, several members of the Bush administration....

Kaplan cites Cheney in his defense secretary days, saying he wants defense cuts, too:

Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements.... You've directed me to buy more M1s, F14s, and F16s — all great systems...but we have enough of them.

Kaplan attempts to blur Cheney's argument — "I like these weapons systems, but you're buying too many" — with Kerry's "we don't need these systems" view. This is particularly in the case of the B-2 bomber, oddly missing from Kaplan's article. Kerry's argument wasn't that the systems were good but that the Congress ordering too many. His argument was that they were costly, waste-riden, full of fraud and abuse, a response to a false threats, cutting off heads, cutting off ears, acting in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan — whoops, sorry, got caught up in the Kerry speaking-truth-to-power voice there. For example, a wee bit earlier in Kerry's career:

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEAR 1991 — CONFERENCE REPORT

Mr. President, I am opposing the Department of Defense authorization and appropriations conference reports on the grounds that they do not represent sound budgetary policy.

At this time of extreme budget austerity and with the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that have occurred, we can, and should, make larger reductions in defense. Larger reductions can be made without jeopardizing our Nation's security.

These bills afforded the Congress an opportunity to do more than just talk about reducing the deficit over the next 5 years. Unfortunately, we have failed that test, particularly since we have continued funding for wasteful programs and programs for which there is not any rational justification from a national security standpoint.

The B-2 Stealth Bomber Program is a case in point. This is one of the most costly, waste-ridden programs in a long history of waste, fraud and abuse scandals that have plagued Pentagon spending, particularly over the past decade.

The primary contractor for the B-2's, Northrop Corp., is currently the subject of 7 grand jury probes and 11 criminal investigations stemming from problems associated with defense contracts it has received in recent years.

Even top U.S. Air Force officials have taken the unprecedented step of charging publicly that Northrop is so poorly managed that it cannot account for the cost of many programs, and has suffered major breakdowns in the production of every weapon the Pentagon reviewed. Yet, we are still funding this program to the tune of nearly $900 million per plane.

The bills also contain funds for the continuation of the strategic defense initiative. Along with the B-2, the SDI is a product of the cold war era. And as the crisis in the Persian Gulf should demonstrate, we need to spend money on defense requirements to meet real threats, rather theoretical threats of the past. We can only undermine our legitimate defense needs.

It is time for the Pentagon to take its fair share of cuts, rather than pressing for billions of dollars for programs that are fraught with waste, fraud, and abuse and which do nothing to contribute to the strong defense of our Nation. The time is long overdue for us to end the military-industrial corporate welfare complex that has relentlessly chewed up taxpayers' dollars for far too long."

Kaplan also is outraged by Zell's line, "our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of a Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief." Kaplan writes:

A "manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief"? Most people call this a "presidential election."

Uh, Mr. Kaplan, is Fahrenheit 9/11, a film charging the war in Afghanistan was not retaliation for the terrorist attacks of September 11, but was designed to financially benefit of Texas oil interests, typical politics? How about Bruce Springsteen's "Vote for a Change" concert tour through swing states? The accusation that Bush is like Hitler becoming so common that it's not even surprising anymore? The head of Catholics for Kerry comparing Bush to the anti-Christ? Three protesters infiltrating Madison Square Garden to disrupt the president's speech, essentially protesting the president's right to address the nation? This is not a typical presidential election. A good chunk of the country has worked itself into — well, "manic obsession" is as good a term as any — and a firm belief that the world will end if Bush is reelected.

The other oddball remark: "Nothing makes me madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators." Huge applause line, but is he kidding? The U.S. troops in Iraq are occupiers. Even Bush has said so. If he doesn't understand this, then he doesn't understand what our problems are.

Has Bush called our forces occupiers? Sure. But ask the president, or anyone else who supports the war, what the role of U.S. forces is, and their role in Iraq is clear: Liberators. You want to see occupiers? Take a look at the Syrian troops in Lebanon. Take a look at what Iraq did in Kuwait. Ask the Tibetans, or the Eastern Europeans during the Soviet years, or the Rwandan Tutsis, if you can find any left. Any one of 'em would trade the occupying forces in their neighborhood for the "occupying" Americans in a heartbeat.

Kaplan also insists Cheney picked himself to be Bush's veep. No, the final call came from Bush. It's not like Cheney put a gun to Bush's head. (If Kaplan knows differently, he's sitting on a huge October surprise.)

Kaplan closes:

"Sen. Kerry denounces American action when other countries don't approve," Cheney continued, "as if the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent countries." No, that's not it. Kerry thinks that other countries should go along with our actions — that a president must work hard at diplomacy to get them to go along with us — because going it alone often leads to failure. Cheney should ask his old colleague Brent Scowcroft or his old boss W's father about this. Or he should simply go to Iraq and see what unilateralism has wrought.

Well, Bush has been to Iraq for two and a half more hours than Kerry has.

The Kaplan piece is another example of a type of hysteria running through the left-of-center members of the press — disagreement with their opinions and beliefs is now labeled "lying."