Defense defense
On a couple of the weapons, the RNC report cites H.R. 5803 and H.R. 2126. Look those up. They turn out to be votes on the House-Senate conference committee reports for the defense appropriations bills in October 1990 (the same year as S. 3189) and September 1995.
In other words, Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago. He was also one of an unspecified number of senators to vote against a conference report on a defense bill nine years ago. The RNC takes these facts and extrapolates from them that he voted against a dozen weapons systems that were in those bills. The Republicans could have claimed, with equal logic, that Kerry voted to abolish the entire U.S. armed forces, but that might have raised suspicions. Claiming that he opposed a list of specific weapons systems has an air of plausibility. On close examination, though, it reeks of rank dishonesty.
I think that’d be a good line for Republicans. Vote against Kerry, he wants to abolish the military! Then we can get Ted Sampley to put up a fake photo of Kerry with a pacifist group, which would prove he hates America.
Stuff like this is so misleading.. it’s hard to be a Senator with so many stupid riders tacked onto bills like the budget and things like that. The RAVE bill (actually I don’t think it was called the RAVE bill, the first bill failed on its own so they renamed it and did some slight of hand) was tacked onto the Amber Alert bill. As a “raver” and DJ this just –s me off to no end.