US Bunker Busters failed John Kerry's Global Test
In the first presidential debate of 2004, John Kerry declared his opposition to developing any new "bunker buster" bombing technology that the US Military might hope to use against the extremely hardened targets rogue nations like North Korea and Iran (or Iraq) employ to hide & protect their ambitions in the nuclear & WMD arena. Likening the threat posed by terrorist states to the defensive posture pursued by the US Military is nothing new for John Kerry who has persistently sided with Stalinist regimes like Daniel Ortega's, against the goals of the United States, while he has persistently & adamantly opposed military advancements, throughout his political career.

When running for the Senate in 1984, John Kerry based his candidacy on opposition to Reagan's military stance in facing down the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. He declared that “the biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense”, something any rightly self-searching individual should feel outright shame over after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He declared that “Americans feel more threatened by the prospect of war, not less so” when the Pentagon sought to invent new technologies including the Bunker Buster technologies which were first put to use in the 1991 Gulf War to evict Saddam from Kuwait, another military endeavor thoroughly opposed by John Kerry.

He not only proposed halting the Reagan Administration's efforts to rebuild our US military but cutting $53 billion dollars from the defense budget. He specifically targeted "Major Nuclear Programs" for outright cancellation including the MX Missile, the B-1 Bomber and a 50% cut in outlays for Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, including those which were used with such effectiveness in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And similar to his posturing in the debate, Kerry continues his personal theme that the efforts by the US to defend ourselves means “our national priorities become more and more distorted as the share of our country’s resources devoted to human needs diminishes”. The only difference between John Kerry in 1984 and the John Kerry of today is the addition of new social rhetoric to his perpetual & never ending anti-US defense campaign.

These proposals were even outlined in his original campaign literature, including the following page which was previously highlighted in this space following Zell Miller's dynamic speech to the Republican National Convention.

When Kerry declared, during the debate, "I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation", he said it with the conviction of a dedicated proponent of the nuclear freeze during the 1980's. But that was not the only statement he made which revealed his view of the world is still locked in pre 9/11 posturing and shallowly devoid of recognition for the serious threats to the United States posed by Al Qaeda and all the other sympathetic, shadowy middle eastern Islamic terrorist groups and their allies who are bent on civilization's destruction.

Recall the original question in this context, as posed to Kerry by Lehrer, was "what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?"

Kerry's answer, focused on the remaining unsecured former Soviet nuclear material, was a rather curious one, and seemingly revealed deeply rooted liberal flaws in the Senator's decades of ill-fated policy thinking, from Vietnam to Nicaragua, through the Nuclear Freeze in the midst of the cold war and later seeking US intelligence cuts of $6 billion after the first bombing of the World Trade Center.

A discernable peculiarity about Kerry's response was that it was focused on Russia and suggests Kerry has not emerged from pre-9/11 cold war thinking. Obviously the WMD counter-proliferation efforts, as so far successfully focused on Libya and the A.Q. Khan network by the Bush administration, are more relevant and critical to the ongoing war with Islamic fascism originating from the middle east and, ton for ton, dollar for dollar, I'd much rather have those materials procured first. In Kerry's limited thinking, the US is seemingly unable to safeguard nuclear materials from middle eastern extremists like Ghadaffi while we continue working alongside the Russians.

Kerry's complaints that the US is pursuing new ways to improve our bunker buster level bombing stopped just shy of "blame America first" in words if not in his reaction. Bush was right to reaffirm the true ultimate threat is the combination of terrorists and WMD, and to not deny our military the ability or avenues to protect our country, albeit new capabilities for bunker buster bombs or any of the other myriad of other defense proposals that John Kerry has so vehemently opposed over his 20 years in the US Senate.
- posted by SEO LinkTagstic @ 10:50 AM