Washington Post Calls Out Miller And Cheney On Kerry Swipes

[DrFunkenstein]

This is EXACTLY why the campaign should be two feet up the media's ass with THE FACTS.

Both Miller and Cheney reached deep into Kerry's past to present him as a danger to Americans' security. "Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations." Cheney, in turn, said Kerry "began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed only at the directive of the United Nations."

Both men apparently were referring to a 1970 interview Kerry gave to the Harvard Crimson. In his speech accepting his party's nomination in July, Kerry said: "I will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security."

Miller portrayed Kerry as "an auctioneer sealing off our national security." He recited a long list of weapons systems he said Kerry opposed.

Miller's list was mostly derived from a single Kerry vote against a spending bill in 1991, rather than individual votes against particular systems. The bill was also opposed by five Republican senators at the time, and Cheney, who was defense secretary at the time, was demanding even deeper cuts in defense spending by Congress.

As Bush has often done, both speakers also condemned a vote Kerry made against Bush's request for $87 billion for military and reconstruction spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kerry voted for an alternative version of the bill that would have funded some of the spending by raising taxes on incomes greater than $312,000. For his part, Bush had vowed to veto a version of the bill that passed that would have converted half of the Iraq rebuilding plan into a loan.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1803&e=16&u=/washpost/a54597_2004sep1