But 'luc, that anti-satellite system has done wonders. And, the Star Wars too…Hell, it must be working since we’ve now finally deployed it 20 years later! (Hell, we’re so confident it works, we didn’t even bother to subject it to any realistic operational tests…After all, it passed the hopelessly unrealistic tests almost half the time!)
Are you serious? Honest to Pete, Sam do you mean this?
You know, I trust, that such as this went to support some of the most brutal and savagely oppressive men of our time? You don’t have to go all the way to Iraq for mass graves of the innocent, Sam, they’re right close to hand. We have our own harvest of ghosts to account for.
If Kerry opposed this, I can’t find it especially commendable, merely that he is possessed of common decency.
I like how you consistently make this claim, that I got handed a can of whup ass or the like. Very compelling. You, on the other hand, merely consistently withdraw to the rear in a gentlemanly fashion when other debaters get too shrill or downright mean. Uh huh.
That’s all nice. What I want you to do, first thing, is tell me what the header for the category under which the Tomahawk is listed on your 20 year old John Kerry memo.
No, in fact, before you withdraw to the rear without answering in your gentlemanly fashion, I will quote it for you. Ready … “NUCLEAR FORCES.”
Ow, not so hard with your big can of whup ass.
But thanks for finding something new to spew in a dispassionate gentlemanly fashion upon our pages… I guess the Swift Boat went down, huh? Anything new on Joseph Wilson?
Hardly fair, Hent. Only been a year.
elucidator said:
As the Tomahawk was so classified at the time. That doesn’t change the fact that the Tomahawk made an outstanding conventional weapon.
However, you could be correct that he was only speaking of the nuclear variant. In fact, the amount of $264 million would be in line with that. But I remember the times well, and Kerry was opposed to the Tomahawk in general. It scared the left because they saw it as a first-strike nuclear weapon, and they figured ole’ Ronnie Raygun would use it. They hated Reagan then just about as much as you hate Bush now, and they weren’t about to roll over and let him have a first-strike nuclear weapon.
Here in Canada, protestors tried to shut down the test corridor for the Tomahawk, conventional or nuclear. Didn’t matter. They wouldn’t accept the notion that the Tomahawk would stay conventionally-armed anyway. Lines were drawn in the sand over it. The Tomahawk and MX were the two most controversial weapons systems of the 1980’s, by far. They were debated and argued constantly, and Kerry was on the other side of the aisle.
Now that’s an honest argument. I’m surprised more people on the left haven’t simply embraced Kerry’s record. Most of you who were around then were opposed to the same things Kerry was. Why shouldn’t you be proud of that, and defend that record?
I happen to disagree with your assessments, at least in part. I think the anti-communist insurgency support has to be looked at in the context of the larger cold war. Sure, the U.S. supported some unsavory characters, but that’s because their opponents were equally unsavory or worse, and had the decided disadvantage of being in the Soviet camp. The left, especially in Canada, had almost mythologized the Sandinistas into the second coming of the founding fathers or something. They weren’t. They were brutal totalitarians. The Contras were corrupt, and sometimes brutal themselves. But they were better than the Sandinistas, and they helped advance world peace by shrinking the sphere of Soviet influence.
Oops. Sorry, that first section was addressed to Hentor.
Honestly, Sam, do you think these things through even a little bit? Might there be a good reason for us not to have first-strike nuclear weapons? Might they be a little bit destabilizing? Now that we know how close the Soviets (and, in fact, I believe our side too) came to mistaking innocent scientific rocket launches or flights of geese for nuclear weapons, do you really think it is wise to build the sort of first-strike capability that would cause the Soviets to go on an even more hair-trigger alert?
What a wondrous gift for euphemism you have, Sam!
And you would be the man to explain: the Sandanistas siezed power and ruthlessly held an election, lost, and then cunningly handed over the reins of power to a center right coalition. Frankly, the subtle treachery of this is lost on me, perhaps you can explain how this fits stealthily into the Comintern’s plan for World Domination.
The Tomahawk was NOT a first-strike weapon. They took four and a half hours to get to many of their targets. You would have needed to launch thousands of them to have a successful first strike. The odds of none of them being spotted were infinitesimal. It was portrayed as one, however.
What the Tomahawk gave the U.S. was the capability to hit individual inland targets stealthily - not en masse, but one or two at a time. Pretty much like they’ve been used since.
John Kerry opposes tort reform that will cap the award an injured patient can collect from a negligent doctor, hospital, nurse, etc., for non-economic damages. Conversely, George W. Bush wants to cap “pain and suffering” awards at $250,000, and Kerry was roundly criticized when he chose a highly sucessful trial attorney as his running-mate. Whether one is for or against tort reform philosophically is one thing, it’s another entirely when one tries to pass legislation based on specious data.
Sounds like John Kerry’s position is based on sound science and research.
Well, what I was objecting to was your strawman argument about why people were objecting to having a first-strike weapon. Now, you have changed your argument to say that what they were wrong about was it having first-strike capability in the first place. Maybe that is true, but it would be nice to see some sort of cite to back that up. (A quick look on the web seemed to turn up numbers implying they could reach their targets in considerably less time than the 4-1/2 hours that you portray.)
At any rate, Kerry’s memo only talked about reducing the Tomahawk (by which he might have meant the nuclear variant, as you now admit) by 50%. There are just so many holes in logic in going from that memo to claims that Kerry’s proposed cuts were not justified that you will really have to do a lot more work than just flash a 20 year old memo from God-knows-what source and say, “See, Kerry is soft on defense.” And, let’s just say that the credibility on “your side of the aisle” (to borrow a phrase of yours from above) has been kind of wanting lately when we’ve actually taken a close look at these claims.
Trying to get a sense of anything about John Kerry from the speakers at the RNC is like asking Ron Brown to describe O.J. Simpson, n’est pas? Not quite the best source for an accurate view of the man, and all that.
The following premise has been swallowed whole by millions of Americans: John Kerry is invariably liberal, on every vote, on every issue. He is also a non-stop flip-flopper. First, he’s on the liberal side, then he turns around, and he’s on the liberal side, then all of a sudden, he reverses himself, and is on the liberal side…
Any more silly questions about the threat of Cognitive Dissonance? I have some brochures, right here…
I have to take you to task for all of this.
I have refrained from criticizing Kerry for this campaign document after it was revealed that he later admitted that it advocated cuts that were foolishly deep. I commend Kerry for coming to his senses on this one.
Your post, however, is full of misstatements.
First of all, Aegis cruisers were not replaced by Aegis destroyers. Aegis cruisers were commissioned between 10 to 15 years before the Aegis destroyers were. At the time they were built, the Aegis destroyers existed only on paper.
Cancelling the cruisers and building only the destroyers would have delayed the Aegis program for years, at a time when the Soviets had ships with missile systems and also aircraft that posed grave risks to our aircraft carriers. Furthermore, the destroyers have not yet replaced the cruisers. All of the cruisers built are still commmissioned ships in the fleet, including the USS Monterey, the cruiser I was fortunate to serve on for two years.
Furthermore, the Tomahawk nuclear missile has not been eliminated. It is an active weapon system.
I hope this clears some matters up.
Blah, blah, blah.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096127/
You guys really ought to make up your minds. It’s either anti-American and unsafe to want to cut the military budget, or it’s fiscally responsible and pragmatic to seek reductions or eliminate certain weapons at certain times, under certain circumstances. Either way, quit the damn finger-pointing. Seeing as how more of them would be pointed your way than Kerry’s it’s a rather obvious double standard.
Shayna, what is your problem? That post wasn’t directed against Kerry, and I made great pains to say so. It was meant to correct some things Hentor said that flat out weren’t true.
I merely wanted to inform him of such. I have a bit of knowlege and expertice here. I work on the Tomahawk cruise missile project, and install missile support systems on the very same Aegis cruisers and destroyers Hentor referred to.
If you have any data that contradicts this, please let me know about it. But I’d stack my eleven years of Navy experience, as a sailor and a civilian contractor, against your - what? - Google searches?
A wise person defers to the expertice of a subject matter expert.
Okay, let’s be specific, since you feel my characterization is a misstatement. Certainly you should correct me if I am wrong, but the last Aegis cruiser was commissioned in 1991, and the first Aegis destroyer was commissioned in 1991, so it seemed fair to say that the destroyer replaced the cruiser.
But in the thread in which we discussed this, you said
So why have you reverted back to the interpretation of this line on the memo as “cancelling the cruisers?”
We also talked about this in the thread. It is actively in storage. Perhaps you merely object to the term “eliminated,” when I perhaps should have said “mothballed.”
Well, not really, since you seem to have flip-flopped on your interpretation of the line in the Kerry memo, and described the TLAM-N as active, despite my having quoted that information about its being recalled and placed into storage once already.
The newer Aegis destroyers are replacing older Kidd class destroyers, Spruance class destroyers and Perry class frigates. These non-Aegis ships are being removed from active service at a brisk pace and transferred to reserve duty, the mothball fleet, sale to foreign naval forces, or sinking in torpedo or Harpoon exercises and continued service afterward as artificial reefs.
Since the Aegis cruisers have fifteen or twenty years left in them, they hardly have been replaced.
Also, you will notice, per your post, that the nuclear tomahawks were removed from ships in an arrangement with the Russians that included reciprocation from them. This, you’d agree, made the world much safer. Safer, surely, than unilaterally cancelling the program on our own, without getting anything from them.
The missiles are in storage, and threaten no one. The program is still considered an active one. You can interpret this as you see fit.
For some reason, I trust reputable sources on the web, like the Federation of American Scientists, more than someone who says “trust me I know”:
(Bolding mine.)