March 19, 2004
WRONG, EXCEPT ON THE FACTS:
Bush Insults Kerry's Intelligence: The president's latest attack is even more dishonest than the last. (Fred Kaplan, March 9, 2004, Slate)
Yesterday, President Bush told a crowd of supporters in Houston that, back in 1995, two years after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Sen. John Kerry introduced legislation to cut the intelligence budget by $1.5 billion. "Once again, Sen. Kerry is trying to have it both ways," the president said. "He's for good intelligence; yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services. And that is no way to lead a nation in a time of war." Bush further charged that Kerry's bill was "so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single-co-sponsor in the United States Senate." [...]One thing is true: Kerry did introduce a bill on Sept. 29, 1995—S. 1290—that, among many other things, would have cut the intelligence budget by $300 million per year over a five-year
So the only thing that's true is the fact, but Mr. Kaplan disagrees with the wisdom of the cuts? Shocking. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 19, 2004 5:06 PM
Reading the article quickly, the CIA was accumulating unspent funds for future availability for use in satelite reconaisance.(precisely, what was most valuable in both Afghanistan and Iraq and which probably saves the lives of servicemen). This IS our technological advantage along with cruise missles. Of course there are other technological advantages, but why take away any of these advantages so that we level the playing field. I want an unfair playing field.
Who is this Kaplan? Surely he is not the one who was writing intelligent articles for the Altantic a few years back.
H-man: You are thinking of Robert Kaplan, who still writes intelligent articles and books. This is, obviously, a very different Kaplan. :)
Posted by: kevin whited at March 20, 2004 9:55 AM