what's okay for the veep isn't okay for anyone else

[homechicago]

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based group that advocates limited federal spending, unearthed a speech Cheney gave on the subject in 1990.

"Over the course of the last year, since I've been secretary," Cheney said at the time, "I've recommended terminating, canceling, shutting down 20 separate weapons programs. In most cases, most cases, Congress has resisted those cuts."

The Kerry campaign issued a list of weapons that Cheney supported cutting, including some of the same weapons that the Republicans have put on Kerry's cut list.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics...home-headlines

sure, he can cower from the draft over and over, but he's a true patriot. good thing he didn't throw away his ribbons. hypocrite.

[I_was_aborted]

Can't see the story as I'm not a member. Please post it here?

[homechicago]

By Peter Wallsten and Nick Anderson, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — Republicans on Monday escalated their attacks on Sen. John F. Kerry's record on defense issues, but the Democratic presidential candidate and his allies struck back with sharp questions about the paths that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pursued during the Vietnam War.

In a day of unusually personal exchanges, Kerry for the first time joined those questioning whether Bush met his National Guard obligations during the war.

Cheney, meanwhile, gave a speech that portrayed Kerry, who won several medals while serving in Vietnam, as soft on terrorism and too equivocal to be trusted with the nation's defenses. The speech bolstered a new advertising blitz by the Bush campaign that suggested Kerry's Senate votes on defense would have left U.S. forces unequipped for the Iraqi invasion and the war on terrorism.

"Sen. Kerry's record raises serious doubts about his understanding of the broader struggle against terror, of which Iraq is only one front," Cheney said. He said the Massachusetts senator "has yet to outline any serious plan for winning the war on terror."

Kerry's allies said the attacks lacked legitimacy because the vice president had avoided military service during the Vietnam War.

"When John Kerry was risking his life for his country in Vietnam, Dick Cheney was getting deferments because, in his own words, he had other priorities than military service," said Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman, in a speech at party headquarters. "And he somehow today feels qualified to tell us that John Kerry won't do what it takes to defend America?"

Kerry's comments on Bush's National Guard service came during a network TV interview in which he was being pressed about conflicting accounts of whether he discarded his medals as part of a 1971 antiwar protest at the U.S. Capitol, or only pretended to do so. Kerry responded that questions about his medals were part of a Republican effort to undermine his standing on defense issues.

"This comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard," Kerry said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "I'm not going to stand for it."

The day's exchanges demonstrated again that, with polls showing the nation as polarized as it was in the disputed 2000 election, the presidential campaign had turned nasty unusually early, with still more than six months until election day.

The back-and-forth between the campaigns also showed that both sides believed they could not win without a solid standing on national security issues.

Kerry locked up his party's nomination in part because of the perception among many Democrats that his military record made him the strongest challenger to Bush in a nation still grappling with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Bush campaign has been trying to use Kerry's Senate voting record to undermine his national security credentials while casting the president as firm in his war on terrorism.

Even some Democrats concede the GOP has turned the debate in its favor.

"The guy without the service record ought to be the one on the defensive here," said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, who worked for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000.

Before Monday, Kerry had declined to focus on the questions about Bush's military service from 1972 to 1973, when Bush had obtained permission to transfer from the Texas Air National Guard to an Alabama Guard unit so he could work on the Senate campaign of a friend of his father's.

The White House has released medical, pay and other military records that it says prove that Bush fulfilled his military obligations. But Democratic officials and other critics have said those records do not show that Bush showed up for all the required duty during a temporary assignment in Alabama. Also unclear is why Bush failed to take a required medical examination.

Cheney's address Monday kicked off what the Bush campaign was calling its "Winning the War on Terror Tour."

The vice president delivered his speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where in 1946 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous address invoking the "Iron Curtain" that separated Soviet-aligned nations from democratic Europe, and which essentially marked the beginning of the Cold War.

Cheney, who has emerged as one of Kerry's chief GOP critics, drew laughter when he painted Kerry as a flip-flopper on the war in Iraq, then called the senator condescending in his portrayal of U.S. allies there as "window dressing."

"I am aware of no other instance in which a presumptive nominee for president of the United States has spoken with such disdain of active, fighting allies of the United States in a time of war," Cheney said. "Sen. Kerry's contempt for our good allies is ungrateful to nations that have withstood danger, hardship and insult for standing with America in the cause of freedom."

He cited Kerry's votes on budgets spanning 20 years, saying that the senator wanted to cut billions from President Reagan's defense package at the height of the Cold War in 1984 by targeting the MX missile, the B-1 Bomber, antimissile defense systems, Apache helicopters and other systems.

"And at numerous times," Cheney added, "Sen. Kerry has voted against funding weapons systems vital to fighting and winning the war on terror, such as the Blackhawk helicopter and the Predator drone."

The new Bush advertisements criticize Kerry's vote last year against an $87-billion package to fund military operations and the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush campaign is spending $10 million to place versions of the ad on cable stations and regional broadcast outlets.

As a man narrates, footage is shown of soldiers and military equipment on the move in a desert scene plainly meant to evoke Iraq. Each time a weapon is mentioned, a corresponding image vanishes from the screen — an armored vehicle, a missile launcher, a bomber, a fighter jet — to graphically depict what the Bush campaign says would be the consequences of Kerry's votes.

The narrator says John Kerry has repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror: Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Patriot missiles, B-2 Stealth bombers, F/A-18 fighter jets and more.

"Kerry even voted against body armor for our troops on the front line of the war on terror. John Kerry's record on national security: troubling."

But except for the case of the B-2, none of the votes cited by the Bush campaign targeted specific weapons systems. Rather, Bush's critique of Kerry relies heavily on the senator's votes against spending measures in 1990, 1995 and 1996 that covered a broad array of defense programs.

Democrats and other critics noted Monday that Cheney, too, wanted to trim Defense Department budgets when he led the agency under President George H.W. Bush.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based group that advocates limited federal spending, unearthed a speech Cheney gave on the subject in 1990.

"Over the course of the last year, since I've been secretary," Cheney said at the time, "I've recommended terminating, canceling, shutting down 20 separate weapons programs. In most cases, most cases, Congress has resisted those cuts."

The Kerry campaign issued a list of weapons that Cheney supported cutting, including some of the same weapons that the Republicans have put on Kerry's cut list.

"Who is Dick Cheney to question John Kerry's fitness to serve as Commander in Chief?" asked an e-mail circulated by America Coming Together, a group that is raising money to mobilize voters against Bush. It noted Cheney's multiple Vietnam War deferments.

Cheney received his first student deferment in 1963, while enrolled at Casper College in Wyoming, according to a 2000 report by Associated Press. His status was renewed twice when he was an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

After graduating in 1965, Cheney became a graduate student in the fall and obtained another deferment, AP reported. He received his third deferment under a provision for parents in 1966, when wife Lynn became pregnant, the news service reported.

In his speech, McAuliffe also invoked the controversy surrounding Cheney's secretive meetings with energy companies and his links to Halliburton, which secured billions in Iraqi contracts without competitive bidding. The speech suggested that Democrats saw Cheney to be a vulnerability to the Bush ticket.