Prove or refute this anti-Kerry email for me, please

Factual Questions
1

Mods: I know this may well devolve into a shouting match, for which I most humbly apologize, but I do want a factual answer, if such is possible.
If you feel it belongs in the pit, then so be it.

When I saw this in my in box this morning, and who it was from, I thought “Here we go again”. During the 2000 Gore-Bush election we were inundated with anti-Gore emails from various people, many of whom are members of my family, and without exception they were misleading, taken out of context, or total and complete BS.
In one case they attributed an unusually banal quote to Gore that I absolutely remembered hearing from Quale, for example.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is more of the same, but Snopes has nothing on it, so if anybody knows the truth of the matter, I’d like to hear it, either way.

Here’s the text of the message:

Subject: FW: John Kerry on Defense
John Kerry on Defense – I hadn’t seen this list printed until today. It
would make one heckuva mailer if it were sent to voters.
(So… send it to as many voters as you can!)

He voted to kill the Bradley Fighting Vehicle
He voted to kill the M-1 Abrams Tank
He voted to kill every Aircraft carrier laid down from 1988
He voted to kill the Aegis anti aircraft system
He voted to Kill the F-15 strike eagle
He voted to Kill the Block 60 F-16
He voted to Kill the P-3 Orion upgrade
He voted to Kill the B-1
He voted to Kill the B-2
He voted to Kill the Patriot anti Missile system
He voted to Kill the FA-18
He voted to Kill the F117
In short, he voted to kill every military appropriation for the development
and deployment of every weapons systems since 1988 to include the battle
armor for our troops. With Kerry as president our Army will be made up of
naked men running around with sticks and clubs.
He also voted to kill all anti terrorism activities of every agency of the
U.S. Government and to cut the funding of the FBI by 60%, to cut the funding
for the CIA by 80%, and cut the funding for the NSA by 80%.
But then he voted to increase OUR funding for U.N operations by 800%!!!
Is THIS a President YOU want?

Given Kerry’s record, I find it almost impossible to believe that he’s soft-headed on defense. So I guess my question is; did Kerry vote against these appropriations, and if so, what were his reasons?

For instance, from what I’ve heard, the Bradley Fighting vehicle is a piece of crap and a danger to our troops, and given that assumption, I’d vote against it too.
Caveat: The above is just a possible scenario. I don’t know any more about the Bradley than what I’ve seen on the TV.

2

Why is that impossible to believe? Everything I’ve heard about him tells me that he is an extreme liberal, i.e. less on guns, more on butter.

3

Most appropriation bills aren’t in the form of “F-15: yes or no?” They’re frequently comprehensive bills for funding entire classes of projects, with many other items, regulations and resolutions added in.

Completely unrelated items are often tacked on to bills as riders. A good example of this was the expansion of warrant-free investigation capabilities granted to law enforcement agencies (Patriot Act II) that was attached to the 2004 appropriations bill for intelligence agencies back in December (the same day as the ‘we got him’ speech, in fact). A number of representatives felt this was an underhanded was of passing a controversial measure and voted against the bill. By your email’s reasoning, these people were voting against funding our intelligence agencies to find and stop terorrists.

Also, there can often be competing bills before Congress that accomplish roughly the same things “Fund Project A by doing b,c,d” vs “Fund Project A by doing x,y,z” so that unless a representative voted in favor of both, an opponent could claim “he voted against Project A.”

Plus there’s a fair amount of horse trading going on in Congress. “I’ll vote in favor of your bill, even though I have no real stake in it or may even be opposed to it, if in return you back a bill that’s important to me.”

These are just possibilities, to find the truth you’d have to see what he actually voted against, as well as what other bills (that may have included the items listed in your email) he voted in favor of.

4

Ever heard those weird factoids like, “In Alabama it’s illegal for a man to wear a dress and coonskin cap while riding a bicycle down Main street in Birmingham.” (I just made that up) And you think to yourself, “Why in the hell is that even a law? Was there some kind of out-of-control situation a few years back?” So you look up the statute and the factoid is indeed true…because Bicycles are not allowed on Main Street, which is a limited access highway.

A statement is made based on a grain of truth, but the spirit of that truth is corrupted by the statement itself. To add to Sublight, it might be interesting to see what was voted for in those scenarios. He may have voted against the Bradley in favor of resurrecting the long-forgotten Death Ray* used in the 1920s–a weapon far superior to the Bradley in many respects.

  • Someone had to do it.
5

Without digging into the ins and outs of every vote Kerry has cast in the last 16 years, I notice that your email fails to mention the Army’s Crusader Artillery program, or the Comanche helicopter program. Seeing as both these programs were killed by the Bush administration, it’s dishonest to imply that Kerry had anything to do with their demise.
Major weapons programs require long term investments, and during the course of even a successful program, there will come points where congress makes its opinion known as to whether a program is moving in the right direction or in the wrong direction. These opinions usually come in the form of increases or decreases in the funding of certain aspects of the program. For all we know from your email, Kerry is being pilloried for voting against the inclusion of those $1000 toilet seats in the M-1 Abrams.
Some of us would see such a vote as a good thing. YMMV

6

It’s all business as usual. See this Slate article to see how Bush #1 and his then Defense Secretary (guess who!) bragged about cutting up the defense budget in 1992.

7

Thanks for your responses everybody. I kinda figured it was another ‘out-of-context’ sort of smear.

Actually Attrayant’s article addresses my question fairly well. I wonder if I’d get into Copyright Hell if I cut and pasted it and sent it back to the email’s originator? :wink:

8

Just to satisfy my curiousity, do you have a cite for this that isn’t from a conservative news source?

9

Because, of course, “less on guns, more on butter” is the classical definition of “extremism” :rolleyes:

But, really, this is a case in which at various different times in his Senate tenure, Kerry has voted against an appropriation that includes one or more of these weapons systems. As mentioned above, it’s not like it is “M04 Weapons system: Yes/No” but something like >>To amend Section 1002, subheading (a), paragraph (iv) so that it reads “$Truckload billion, for acquisition of 50 new M4Es, with reserved option for a further 50, and upgrade of 300 existing M04Bs to M04E standard” instead of “$Vanload billion, for upgrade of 350 existing M04Bs to M04E”<<