Democrat think tanks says Kerry went too far in CIA, Military cuts

Washington Time ^ | March 7, 2004 | Donald Lambro

[BJungNan]

Two decades of votes cast by Sen. John Kerry to cut military and intelligence spending could make him vulnerable to charges of being soft on defense in the 2004 presidential election, say some top political and defense analysts.

(SNIP)

Political and defense analysts also say that Mr. Kerry's anti-defense spending record could become one of his strategic weaknesses as the Democratic presidential nominee running in an age of terrorism.

(SNIP)

"It's pretty well established that he was more or less automatically against increasing defense spending on particular programs, although he was not alone in that. He was not someone who was going to be in favor of more defense spending," said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a national security scholar at Brookings.

(SNIP)

Michael O'Hanlon, a prominent national security adviser at Brookings, believes that overall, Mr. Kerry "is very strong on national security," but he says that the senator's past votes to slash the CIA's budget "are probably not his strongest."

"A lot of people got that wrong in the 1990s. Many of us who supported intelligence cuts in the 1990s may have gone too far," in light of the subsequent need for stronger intelligence in the war on terrorism, Mr. O'Hanlon said.

He also questions one of the central criticisms that Mr. Kerry has leveled against the president's decision to go to war to topple Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime — calling it "a rush to war."

"I do think that any Democrat who says that the president needed to be more patient should explain when patience should have run out," Mr. O'Hanlon said. He characterized Mr. Kerry's revised campaign position as "I want to be tough on Saddam Hussein but just not yet."

"Any Democrat who says that Bush rushed to war needs to say specifically how much we should have waited and what bench marks he would have used to decide when we go to war," Mr. O'Hanlon said. "These are questions he has to answer."

[BJungNan]

Article covers a lot of ground but definately worth the read. These are Democrats talking about Kerry, people who are admiting they, like him, were wrong.

[dead]

Many of us who supported intelligence cuts in the 1990s may have gone too far…

This is understandable, really. Bob Torricelli was seriously itching to get into Bianca Jagger’s pants, so John Kerry and his other politician pals just helped him out a bit.

The Democrats always have their priorities in order.

(BTW, Bob succeeded! Way to go, Bob!)

[Rokurota]

What difference does it make? The media will never discuss these issues...and when Bush brings them up he'll be called a meanie attacking a "true American war hero." Sorry, but that's how it will go down. We all know it.

[BJungNan]

What difference does it make? The media will never discuss these issues...and when Bush brings them up he'll be called a meanie attacking a "true American war hero." Sorry, but that's how it will go down. We all know it.

But you can effect the thinking of your friends and associates. And they vote. Information is very useful in those discussions.

[FReethesheeples]

BRAVO!!

Good post. John Kerry is NOT good for America, the economy, military, the war on Terror, or Troop Morale!

Nasty John the Waffling French Undertaker, who is behind the atatacks on GWB's 9/11 ad, per NewsMax & the American Spectator & now the NY Post.

Kerry, who is personally endorsed by Yasser Arafat, Haiti's Aristide, Iran's Mullahs, Traitor "Red Jane" Fonda, Kim Jong Il, (& Kim Il Jong), Mugabe, Marxist thug Chavez of Venezuela, Castro of Cuba, & France's Jacques Chirac, is a weapon of mass economic destruction.

He'll destroy the troops in Iraq, the War on Terrorism,

& the U.S. stock market with all his negative talk and whiny-leftist-liberal sour-puss troop-bashing, Bush-bashing, America-bashing talk & self-aggrandizing, ultra-negative sourpuss whiny elitist personality.

[Former Proud Canadian]

I think the actual article link is:

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040307-120636-3469r.htm

[m1-lightning]

Fox News reported yesterday that Kerry originally proposed to cut the intelligence by $90 milllion.

[VadeRetro]

No excuse for getting excited, over-reacting.

[sarasota]

Nah. Kerry is not going to win. We haven't even heated up the irons we'll be putting in the fire to roast this guy. His days are numbered.

[demlosers]

Michael O'Hanlon, a prominent national security adviser at Brookings, believes that overall, Mr. Kerry "is very strong on national security," but he says that the senator's past votes to slash the CIA's budget "are probably not his strongest."

This guy O'Hanlon is a lying Rat shill.

[Zack Nguyen]

"A lot of people got that wrong in the 1990s. Many of us who supported intelligence cuts in the 1990s may have gone too far," in light of the subsequent need for stronger intelligence in the war on terrorism, Mr. O'Hanlon said.

Gee, ya think? Nineteen terrorists hijack airliners and kill 3000 people, and maybe you were wrong to cut intelligence? I'm not so sure - maybe we need another commission. sarcasm off.

In fairness, it's not the left's fault that people died. Its the fault of terrorists. But their kneejerk cuting of intelligence and military (because privately they hate them both) hurts our ability to defend ourselves.

[joesnuffy]

SOFT ON DEFENSE?....Kerry and his comrades are those we need to defend against....

[IPWGOP]

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Democrat think tanks...

Can't get any more oxymoronic than that.

[Eva]

Kerry's biggest stumbling block is his flip flop on the war in Iraq and it will be so apparent once the televised trial of Saddam Hussein begins. I don't think that the Democrats can hold that off until after the election.

[dead]

Kerry's biggest stumbling block is his flip flop on the war in Iraq

There’s flips within flops on that issue.

The biggest one to me is that he voted against the UN authorized Gulf War, and for the “crazy cowboy unilateral” war on Iraq.

The Bush campaign better be ready to hammer him and hammer him some more over that one.

And they better have commercials in the can with the “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped!” speeches Kerry spouted when Clinton was president. Just the antidote to the “Bush lied!” nonsense.

[Eva]

I don't think that Bush will need any anti-Kerry ads if they would just get the trial of Saddam started. Just envision 24 hour coverage of Saddam's atrocities, accompanied pictures of mass graves and torture chambers, and horror stories of rapes and children imprisonment.

[adam_az]

This Democrat think tank has seen better days.

[Prodigal Son]

Whole article:

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040307-120636-3469r.htm

Two decades of votes cast by Sen. John Kerry to cut military and intelligence spending could make him vulnerable to charges of being soft on defense in the 2004 presidential election, say some top political and defense analysts.

The liberal Massachusetts senator, who supported deep budget cuts in weapons programs and in the Central Intelligence Agency throughout the 1990s, has said he is girding himself for a barrage of campaign attacks against his record on national security issues. And President Bush already has begun to zero in aggressively on that record, charging that "Senator Kerry's been in Washington long
enough to take both sides of just about every issue."

"My opponent says he approves of bold action in the world but only if other countries don't object," the president said last week in a string of campaign speeches.

But Mr. Bush and the Republicans are not the only ones questioning Mr. Kerry's Senate votes on military matters. Political and defense analysts also say that Mr. Kerry's anti-defense spending record could become one of his strategic weaknesses as the Democratic presidential nominee running in an age of terrorism.

"I do think he is vulnerable on it. When you move into a general election situation, twice as many people think they are conservative than think they are liberal. You can't play by the same game by which you win the Democratic nomination. You've got to move toward the center," said Stephen Hess, a political and policy analyst at the liberal Brookings Institution.

"It's pretty well established that he was more or less automatically against increasing defense spending on particular programs, although he was not alone in that. He was not someone who was going to be in favor of more defense spending," said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a national security scholar at Brookings.

"In the minds of some people, it may have some impact. It depends on what happens in Iraq, the war on terrorism and related issues. At that point, the question of what he did with regard to these military issues may have traction with the public," Mr. Sonnenfeldt said.

Brookings long has been considered the Democrats' shadow government-in-waiting, and many of its top policy analysts were strong supporters of former governor Howard Dean before his antiwar candidacy imploded in the early presidential primaries. But even among Mr. Kerry's supporters at the think tank, there are surprising criticisms of the positions he has taken on Iraq and the decision on when to go to war.

Michael O'Hanlon, a prominent national security adviser at Brookings, believes that overall, Mr. Kerry "is very strong on national security," but he says that the senator's past votes to slash the CIA's budget "are probably not his strongest."

"A lot of people got that wrong in the 1990s. Many of us who supported intelligence cuts in the 1990s may have gone too far," in light of the subsequent need for stronger intelligence in the war on terrorism, Mr. O'Hanlon said.

He also questions one of the central criticisms that Mr. Kerry has leveled against the president's decision to go to war to topple Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime — calling it "a rush to war."

"I do think that any Democrat who says that the president needed to be more patient should explain when patience should have run out," Mr. O'Hanlon said. He characterized Mr. Kerry's revised campaign position as "I want to be tough on Saddam Hussein but just not yet."

"Any Democrat who says that Bush rushed to war needs to say specifically how much we should have waited and what bench marks he would have used to decide when we go to war," Mr. O'Hanlon said. "These are questions he has to answer."

One of Mr. Kerry's sharpest Democratic critics in the presidential campaign leading up to the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries was Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman who said that his Senate colleague was "ambivalent" about going to war in Iraq.

"No Democrat will be elected president in 2004 who is not strong on defense, and this war was a test of that," Mr. Lieberman said in a campaign debate in Columbia, S.C., last year. "How can we win this election if we send a message of weakness on defense and security after September 11, 2001, to the American people?" he asked.

Kerry supporters say he will be able to rebut Mr. Bush's attacks on his national security votes by showing that he has revised his views on defense issues in recent years, as when he voted for the Iraq war resolution in October 2002 and for missile defense.

"This is a guy who, when circumstances changed, is willing to say he changed his mind," Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said.

Mr. Kerry's career-long voting record on defense "isn't going to win him any votes among the people who say national security is among the top two or three issues," pollster John Zogby said. "But it's not going to really lose him any votes, either, because being a liberal and going back to being a longhaired anti-war guy, his voting record is actually going to be a plus for him" in the states that Al Gore carried last year.

Even so, Mr. Zogby said, "If the president is able to define the campaign on national security and paint Kerry as a threat or weak on national security, then that will be to the president's benefit. On the other hand, there are variables like the economy and health care."

[Stultis]

There’s flips within flops on that issue.

The biggest one to me is that he voted against the UN authorized Gulf War, and for the “crazy cowboy unilateral” war on Iraq.

Exactly. And what's more, we don't need to rely only on history (even recent history) because the the Kerry Kontradictions just keep on coming! For example Kerry just a couple days ago said that, were he President, he would have immediately moved to protect Arisitide from the indigenous rebellion. IOW he would have unilaterally intervened without a coalition (even France, which wanted Aristide out!), without a U.N. mandate, and with "arrogant" disregard for international sanctions against the "democratically elected" autocrat Aristide for election stealing and thuggism.

Or, you have Kerry, only days ago, having repeated his insistence that Bush should engage in direct, bilateral talks with North Korea; IOW arrogantly shove aside the coalition of regional powers (incl China, the only country with real leverage over Kim Il) that the Bush administration laboriously built and got North Korea to agree to negotiate with even though libs and establishment pinstripers said they never would.

Here Bush made huge progress in regional multilateralism (which many critics discounted as impossible but admitted, at the time, would be desirable) and Kerry wants to move backward to a unilateral position were we lose the leverage from China, disengage South Korea/Japan/Russia/Australia, and open ourselves to blackmail. Of course this directly contradicts everything Kerry claims about how we didn't distribute the responsibility and liability sufficiently for Iraq.

Every week, and sometimes nearly every day, brings new examples of contradictions, hypocrisy, arbitrariness, or fecklessness from John F., and that's without even going into partisan/domestic issues!