Kerry's thoroughly anti-military voting record

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Drjones

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I got this in an email forward. Now, normally I do not pay much attention to forwards because they are generally filled with lots of misinformation. (And lots of positively hideous spelling and grammar too.)

However, this one caught my attention and I thought I'd post it here.

Oh, and its also true. See the attached images.


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 B-2
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?
 

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Tomahawks and Apaches are two things on that list that we've gotten a lot of use out of. :rolleyes:

Of course, we would have just used sanctions against Saddam back in '91. :rolleyes:
 
That's why he's OBL's pick for POTUS.

Picture J."F." Kerry and Kofi Anon (president and co-president) muggin' it up for the press after the inuagaration in January '05. If that image doesn't make you puke and pull the "R" lever in November nothing will.

- Abe
 
DrJones - you've got the B2 in there twice. Trying to fill out the list eh? ;)

Serious question so no-one bite my head off for not being an American and all that - Big government is bad right? (And I agree it is) Massive spending is bad right? Taxes are bad right? I appreciate national security is good, but massive military spending?

Again it is a serious question, this post made me think and I'd like to hear your thoughts. Ta.
 
DrJones - you've got the B2 in there twice. Trying to fill out the list eh?
Click to expand...

Hey, like I said:

Now, normally I do not pay much attention to forwards because they are generally filled with lots of misinformation. (And lots of positively hideous spelling and grammar too.)
Click to expand...

I obviously didn't read the list THAT carefully. Sorry! :)


Serious question so no-one bite my head off for not being an American and all that - Big government is bad right? (And I agree it is) Massive spending is bad right? Taxes are bad right? I appreciate national security is good, but massive military spending?

Again it is a serious question, this post made me think and I'd like to hear your thoughts. Ta.
Click to expand...

Yes, you are correct in all of the above, HOWEVER; one of the central and most important functions of the govt. both IMO and according to the Constitution (for what little both are worth anymore :( ) is to "provide for the common defense."

It is NOT to hand out welfare checks (sorry communists, that isn't what "provide for the general welfare" means) nor to do the myriad of other things that govt simply should not be doing today.

With that in mind, and keeping in mind also the situation with terrorism, I have no problem with fairly "massive" govt spending on defense/military, in fact it is one of the very few and most crucial of government roles.

Ideally, I would like to pay a heck of a lot less in taxes than I do now, but have most of that money go to "provide for the common defense," to borrow a phrase. :)

Does that help?
 
I understand from listening to Gordon Liddy that Kerry voted against the Navy's F14 Tomcat, which was the workhorse of the Navy for many years and is still in use.

Liddy says he also voted againts the Pershing IRBM, which was deployed in Europe primarily.

I would like to see when a lot of those votes were cast. Methinks doing the Cold War for many of those systems becauses it takes years to get them on-line.

I seem to recall reading someplace that Kerry did not think the Soviet Union was that big a threat. 30-40,000 nuclear warheads pointed at us does not consitute a threat? Duh.

All those weapons systems Kerry voted against, plus Reagan's SDI Star Wars initiative, broke the back of the Soviet Union because their ramshackle economy could not afford to "keep up with the Jones", which caused them to spend a major part of their economy on weapons systems.
 
In every second AR/AK thread on the Rifle forum, I see people complaining about how "the people who choose the weapons are not the ones who fight with them" when they talk about the M16.

Kerry is one who fought with the weapons.

cut the funding of the FBI by 60%
Click to expand...

FBI = the people who burned people and children alive at Waco.

FBI = Ruby Ridge

Those people NEED to have less money.
 
During the Lebanon war, three Abrams tanks were used by the IDF in field testing. It took one T-72 to bring them down.
Click to expand...

Now this is just a silly statement. The M1 series tanks have the best combat record of any tank in the history of armored warfare... including against the vastly inferior T-72. Implying that the T-72 is a better tank than than the M1... or even anywhere NEAR as capable... just proves that you don't know what you are talking about. Doing so is just ignorant on a monumental scale.
 
Fact is, Sean, the M-1 Abrams has only beaten T-72's in cases were the Americans had air superiority.

No nation uses the Abrams today except the USA and thirld-world states that get it for free.

As per its involvement in Desert storm:

"Information on the results of these batles is a cause for extrem controversy; the Western publications on the subjects... seem like the Arabian Nights...

For instance, the reports praise the M1 thermal vision sight, which the brave Americans used to shoot T72's at 3 km. In the very same Western media (10 years later, though) it is written that the AH-64 thermal vision systems were extremely unreliable (so much so that pilots flew with NV goggles, and the identification range was only 2 km - and then they shot a bunch of Bradleys and M1's"

M. Nikolski, M. Rostopshin, "Arms and Technology", 2003
 
My take on the list of stuff Kerry voted against:

He voted to kill the Bradley Fighting Vehicle
-The Bradley had ALOT of teething problems, and was expensive. But it also has actually done well in combat.

He voted to kill the M-1 Abrams Tank
-This is just cosmically stupid. The M-1 is a fantastic MBT, and the M-60 it replaced was obsolescent and really did need to be replaced BADLY.

He voted to kill every Aircraft carrier laid down from 1988
-You can debate somewhat how many carriers we need, since our Navy is more powerful than about the next 5 biggest navies combined. But then again, carriers DO have a long, but still limited, service life.

He voted to kill the Aegis anti aircraft system
-If we don't want Israelis blowing up your ships by "accident" ;) , it is hard to argue against air defense systems for warships.

He voted to Kill the F-15 strike eagle
-Stupid.

He voted to Kill the Block 60 F-16
-REALLY stupid. The F-16 was arguably the smartest fighter design in history.

He voted to Kill the P-3 Orion upgrade
-This would give you more usefulness from an old airframe, so voting against this makes no sense, even if you are cheap.

He voted to Kill the B-1
He voted to Kill the B-2

-Both programs were ridiculously expensive and had lots of developmental troubles. The B-1 arguably never lived up to expectations. Voting against these probably made the most sense.

He voted to Kill the Patriot anti Missile system

-The Army needed SOMETHING for air defense. Unless he had a better alternative to vote for, voting against this was dumb.

He voted to Kill the FA-18

-Well, since we've got carriers, we might as well get a fighter-bomber for it, too. The A-6 was ancient and needed replacing with SOMETHING. A carrier-ized F-16 might have been a viable alternative, but the Navy almost always favors twin-engine carrier planes.

He voted to Kill the F117

-Hard to justify this on any rational grounds. Look at the Gulf War; a handful of the things did a very large proportion of the total bombing, with extremely high accuracy and survivability. It hit the targets and kept US pilots alive. This is one piece of gee-whiz hardware that actually lived up to the hype.
 
One of the M1's problems is that it weighs more than 50 tons. That means only one can be carried per craft. As a comparison, three T-80's can be stuffed into an Antonov - which makes for faster deployment.

60-ton Merkava - good for Israel, we don't need to be able to deploy our tanks in some far away land in 24 hours. The US does.

The F-16 was arguably the smartest fighter design in history.
Click to expand...

su37-i.jpg

s37-i.jpg
 
Fact is, Sean, the M-1 Abrams has only beaten T-72's in cases were the Americans had air superiority.
Click to expand...

The fact is, you have no clue. How does air superiority cause the vast number of main gun kills scored by M1A1 tanks against T-72 tanks, and cause 125mm sabots from T-72 tanks to bounce off the frontal armor of the M1A1? And air superiority is hardly helpful in tank-on-tank battles fought in sandstorms, for instance, in which the M1A1 gang-raped the T-72.

If the T-72 main gun could actually penetrate the frontal armor of an M1, or an M1A1 main gun couldn't blow clean through a T-72 lengthwise, you might have a point.

For instance, the reports praise the M1 thermal vision sight, which the brave Americans used to shoot T72's at 3 km. In the very same Western media (10 years later, though) it is written that the AH-64 thermal vision systems were extremely unreliable (so much so that pilots flew with NV goggles, and the identification range was only 2 km - and then they shot a bunch of Bradleys and M1's"

M. Nikolski, M. Rostopshin, "Arms and Technology", 2003
Click to expand...

A Russkie bad-mouthing U.S. equipment? No way! Ever heard the phrase "consider the soruce," Micro? :rolleyes:

Anyway, the guy's statements make no sense on the face of it. He's comparing two completely different pieces of equipment, the M1A1 thermal sight and the AH-64 apache thermal sight. And having actually served in an Apache unit, I can tell you that Rostopshin is talking out of his fourth point of contact about that, too.

Apaches DO break down alot in general, however.

Ooh, look, pictures of Russian jets designed 10-20 years after the F-16! Too bad they are contemporaries of the F-22. Israel has had great fun with the F-16, by the way. ;)
 
I read a history of the M1 tank not too long ago. IIRC, the M1 was supposedly responsible for killing about 2,000 Iraqi tanks, including T72s, with about a lose of 50 or so M1s, during the first Gulf War.

The T72 has a big main gun problem. The barrel has to be replaced after about 120 rounds have been fired. This affected Iraqi marksmanship because they trained a lot less than the Americans.

The barrel in the M1 has to be replaced about after 1,000 rounds have been fired.

In the siege of Bagdad, the M1A2s (and Bradleys) were annihilating the Iraqi T72s. Not even a contest.

The Iraqis did discover they could immobilize an M1 by firing into the engine compartment from the rear. Not always and easy thing to do.

And, the M1A2s held up well mechanically in the race to Bagdad in some very nasty environmental conditions for tanks or any other vehicle.

So, when someone says the M1, especially the A2 sucks, they probably have no idea what they are talking about.

By the way, Micro, the full battle weight of an M1A2 is about 70 tons.
 
I read a history of the M1 tank not too long ago. IIRC, the M1 was supposedly responsible for killing about 2,000 Iraqi tanks, including T72s, with about a lose of 50 or so M1s, during the first Gulf War.
Click to expand...

Most of those were mechanical breakdowns. A few were "mobility kills" (e.g. hit a mine & broke the tracks). No T-72 *ever* penetrated the main armor array of an M1 tank, while the M1 could blow through the T-72 frontal armor even with the 105mm gun, let alone the 120mm gun on the A1/A2. There are documented cases of M1A1 tanks shooting through sand dunes to hit and one-shot-kill T-72s on the opposite side (which were detected by their exhaust signature).

The Iraqis did discover they could immobilize an M1 by firing into the engine compartment from the rear. Not always and easy thing to do.
Click to expand...

ANY tank in existence can be immobilized in that manner, or by hitting the tracks/running gear. No tank's armor is thick everywhere.

I hear Merkavas are great for repressing Palestinians, however. ;)
 
All those weapons systems Kerry voted against, plus Reagan's SDI Star Wars initiative, broke the back of the Soviet Union because their ramshackle economy could not afford to "keep up with the Jones", which caused them to spend a major part of their economy on weapons systems
Click to expand...

Communism was going to collapse sooner or later - arms race or no arms race. See Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis.
 
The point here is that he has never had any vision. The military build-up during Reagan served two purposes:

To upgrade our equipment from Vietnam-era tools, and
To finally defeat the evil empire (aka USSR/CCCP)

Reagan et al had the vision to see this through, which gave us new tools and which gave us the "peace dividend" in the 90s. Not a bad deal.

The attachments provided by drjones are from 1984.

Every time a "D" cycles out of office, the "R" must get back to revitalizing the military.

If we want to spend our money on welfare rather than the military, then we should become Canada. :neener:
 
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