Posted on 10/14/2024 7:16:58 AM PDT by george76
'I took the time in about three hours to fill out every single portion of that questionnaire in great detail,' VP hopeful said in 2006 congressional debate..
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said in a 2006 survey that he would eliminate federal funding for national missile defense, a technology experts say is crucial to fending off a Chinese or Russian attack on the United States.
Walz said he put a great deal of time and effort into filling out the survey, in which he laid out his views on a series of national security and other policy issues.
"I took the time, in about three hours, to fill out every single portion of that questionnaire in great detail," Walz said in a 2006 congressional debate. In that survey, from the non-partisan group Vote Smart, Walz also indicated he opposed "a policy of pre-emptive military strikes against countries deemed to be a threat to U.S. national security."
Walz's responses reflect decades of skepticism from many Democrats toward domestic missile defense and put him in the dovish wing of the Democratic Party.
The United States maintains a number of domestic missile defense sites through the Missile Defense Agency. The former director of the Pentagon’s Office of Missile Defense policy, Peppi DeBiaso, credits those sites with protecting the country against a potential long-range missile attack.
Detractors of domestic missile defense, DeBiaso wrote in a 2022 Center for Strategic and International Studies essay, discount "the contribution missile defense makes to U.S. deterrence and defense strategy," particularly with relation to North Korea and Iran.
The technology is also essential to the protection of American allies. In fact, the Department of Defense on Sunday authorized the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, to bolster Israel’s domestic missile defense capabilities as the Jewish state plans an attack on Iran.
"THAAD has been proven in combat operationally and has a great test record," an expert on missile defense at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Tom Karako, told the Wall Street Journal.
Walz, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, was in the midst of his first congressional run at the time he responded to the questionnaire and participated in the subsequent debate.
The other responses he provided on matters of national security evince similarly dovish foreign policy views. He did not answer questions regarding whether the United States should withdraw from Iraq or send more troops and indicated the United States should use "diplomatic and economic pressure" rather than "military force" to combat North Korea's nuclear weapons program. He also endorsed "the creation of a Palestinian state."
Walz's 2006 answers on "National Security Issues." Walz's 2006 answers on "Defense Spending." Walz has mostly refrained from discussing foreign policy since Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris tapped him as her running mate. During last week's vice presidential debate against Republican J.D. Vance, he dodged a question on whether he would support what CBS moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O'Donnell framed as a "preemptive" Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program.
"It's clear, and the world saw it on the debate stage a few weeks ago, a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment," Walz said toward the end of his meandering answer.
Walz, however, is perhaps best known for forging a tight relationship with China in the late 1980s. He first traveled to the communist country in 1989, though he arrived after the Tiananmen Square massacre, for which he has falsely claimed to have been present. He returned to China in subsequent years, leading trips for American high school students—with support from the Chinese government—in the early 1990s.
He has extolled life under Chinese communism, describing it as a system in which "everyone shares" and gets "food and housing."
Walz acknowledged his lie about having been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre during his Oct. 1 debate with Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, describing himself as a "knucklehead."
Well he is a Chinese Communist Party Spy
“dovish wing””??? Anti-American POS wing
Dumb knucklehead!
If you want to cut defense spending, eliminate most aircraft carrier groups. The Houthis, and DEI, have proven they are the weapons of a previous era. The F-35 is also a massive white elephant. These programs of course are untouchable - because its where the MIC and hundreds of retired generals and politicians make their living.
Increase missile spending, ABM spending, and drone spending
The T in THAAD stands for Theater, not terminal.
Carriers remind me of the old Zeppelin—disasters waiting to happen...
When the first one gets sunk by drones/missiles/satellite or other based energy weapons in some combination that will end the age of the carrier.
A real kumbiyah DBag.
I'm sure he's all for producing as many missiles as possible and shipping them off to Ukraine.
Yes, I worked on the THAAD program. I showed two liberal friends the video of our first successful test (not classified) and all they could say was it was a waste of money, because we have no enemies. Very enlightening to me.
Wow, he almost has a valid point, but almost certainly off target. The overhead for NMD is staggering, the saying “Never have so many been paid so much for doing so little” is fully relevant. IMHO NMD overhead needs to be cut about 75%. You could probably outfit an entire THAAD battalion for what they spend at Redstone Arsenal on NMD.
And go for 50% of flag officers in the military.
“”THAAD has been proven in combat operationally and has a great test record,” an expert on missile defense at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Tom Karako, told the Wall Street Journal.”
BS. There is no quantum leap forward in tech that solves the problems of ICBM intercept, and certainly not SLBM.
THERE IS NO TIME.
SDI was silly. ABM was silly. It was a jobs program for DoD people. Current interceptors (all 44 of them) are assessed as 50% effective, and even that is stupid.
Russian SLBMs off either coast are 10 mins from Pentagon or Bremerton.
You can power up ring laser gyros that fast and recalibrate the linear accelerometers, but you can’t stack all the launch tasks on top of each other plus confirm targetting.
There is no nuclear missile defense. There never has been. The Russians try just hard for it and have better tech in this arena and they don’t imagine better than 50% effectiveness.
These are all multi billion dollar programs to shoot missiles down that are targeting something 1000s of miles away. You want to spend money? Spend it on domestic defense — oh, and do it by cutting equivalent military spending in other areas because NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN $36T in debt.
They can redirect Missile Defense money to tampon machines.
Saw some footage yesterday of small-fortune missiles being used to oppose cheap drones - and missing several of them. There are circumstances when expensive high tech isn’t the answer where older, cruder methods can get it done better.
But that doesn’t enrich the military-industrial complex, it’s lobbyists and future employees not yet retired out of the Pentagon.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.