Kerry's Defense Record ; It Didn't Start in '92

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Senator John Kerry has asked that we examine his defense record. When Georgia Democrat Senator Zell Miller laid out Mr. Kerry's repeated votes against specific major U.S. military weapons systems, the response from the chattering classes was fascinating. First we have CNN's Wolf Blitzer claiming that the Kerry votes were the same as former Secretary of Defense Cheney's proposed cuts in the defense budget following the end of the Cold War. This was repeated by PBS's Jim Lehrer following Sen. Miller's address to the Republican National Committee.

Let's go back and look at the record. Mr. Kerry first ran for national office in 1984 when he sought the Senate seat held by Democrat Tsongas. In that campaign he proposed that the United States cancel or cut back the F-15, F-14, tactical fighter planes; the B1 and B2 bombers; the Peacekeeper missile; the Trident submarine; the Aegis cruiser; the Abrams tank, the Apache helicopter, and the Tomahawk cruise missile. All these weapons systems either are the backbone of U.S. defenses today or were critical to winning the Cold War.

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Kerry's Defense Record ; It Didn't Start in '92

Now, this was at the height of the Cold War. Mr. Kerry coupled his proposed cuts with support for the "nuclear freeze," which would have terminated the entire U.S. strategic nuclear modernization effort, including ...

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