FINALLY!!! Kerry's Latest on Iraq/WOT
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| Mon, 09-27-2004 - 12:47am |
I have a comprehensive strategy for victory over terrorism, something this administration has never put forward, never fought for, never really understood.
First, I will build a stronger, smarter military and intelligence capability to capture or kill our enemies. As president, I will expand our Army, which is now overstretched, by 40,000 active duty troops, not for Iraq, but so that we have more soldiers to actually fight and find the terrorists in the places that they are.
I will double our Army special forces capacity. And we will accelerate the development and the deployment of many new technologies to track down and bring down the terrorists.
I will strengthen our intelligence system, something that should have started three years ago, not waiting for a 9/11 Commission and then resisting it, in order to detect and stop the terrorists before they can strike.
By the morning of September 12th, everyone in America knew that our intelligence wasn't as good as it needed to be. But three years later, believe it or not, we read that the CIA unit charged with finding bin Laden has fewer experienced case officers today than it had before 9/11.
When I am president, that will change. I will act immediately.
I will act immediately to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations and I will create a national intelligence director with all of the budget and personnel authority that the commission says is needed to keep America safe. It's long overdue.
I will double our overseas clandestine service, train the linguists and the Arab experts that we need, and make sure that the operation hunting down Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida has all of the resources that it needs.
I will make Afghanistan a priority again, because it's still the front line in the war on terror. And all you have to do is ask General Tommy Franks how surprised he was that those troops got moved out of there when he was trying to do the job he was doing before the Congress had even approved moving to Iraq.
As president, I will not subcontract the fight to warlords who are out for nothing but power and personal gain.
I will help the government of Afghanistan expand its authority beyond Kabul to the rest of the country. I will lead our allies to share the burden so that NATO finally provides even more troops and I will show the world that America finishes what it begins.
Second, and this is critical, I will move decisively to deny the terrorists the deadly weapons that they seek. Those weapons were not in Iraq, but tons and kilotons of poorly secured chemical and nuclear weapons are spread throughout the former Soviet Union.
Twelve years ago, we began a bipartisan program -- Joe Biden knows about it; he was part of it with Senator Dick Lugar and others -- in order to help these nations secure and destroy those weapons.
It is incredible and unacceptable that in the three years after 9/11, President Bush has not stepped up that effort to lock down those loose nuclear materials and weapons in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Much more materials were secured in the two years before 9/11 than in the two years afterwards.
When I am president, denying our most dangerous enemies the world's most dangerous weapons will become the central priority for the United States of America. I will secure nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union within four years.
Now, let me just remind America, we tried to upgrade the amount of money that was going into this effort and they said no. I say yes, because that's how you make America safer.
At President Bush's current pace it will take 13 years. I don't think we can afford that when you know what's happened in the black market and in the underground of clandestine efforts.
I will seek a verifiable global ban on the production of materials for nuclear weapons. Nowhere is the nuclear danger more urgent and more obvious to Americans than in Iran and North Korea. This week, Iran announced its intention to process enough raw uranium to create five nuclear weapons.
I will make it clear to Iran that we will lead an international effort to impose tough sanctions if they do not permanently suspend their uranium enrichment program and provide verifiable assurances that they are not developing nuclear weapons.
Yesterday, there were reports that North Korea is preparing to fire an intermediate range ballistic missile that may be able to carry a nuclear warhead. When President Clinton left office that was impossible. The rods, the fuel rods, the uranium and the television cameras and inspectors were in the reactor.
But George Bush refused to talk to them at all for two years, just left them to their own devices, and they figured out their own way to get our attention.
I will work with our allies to get the six-party talks with North Korea back on track and I will talk directly to the North Koreans to get a verifiable agreement that will eliminate their nuclear weapons program completely and irreversibly.
My friends, we have to get serious about diplomacy with North Korea now and only then are we going to have the support that our allies need in order to have the kind of action that you might have to take if diplomacy were to fail.
Third, as president, I will wage a war on terrorist finances every bit as total as the war we wage on the terrorists themselves.
We will trace terrorist funds to their sources and we will freeze the assets of anyone, any person, any bank or any foreign official who is financing terrorism. I know how to do this. As a senator, I exposed and I helped dismantle an international bank that was one of the early financiers of terrorism. It actually had $3 million of Osama bin Laden's money in it, as well as the money of drug transactions and underground weapons transactions.We did it by following the money. We can and must do the same to choke off the dollars that are funding Al Qaida and its allies. And on this, let me make clear, I will grant no one, no country, no sweetheart relationship a free pass.
As president, I will do what President Bush has not done -- I will hold the Saudis accountable. Since 9/11, there have been no public prosecutions in Saudi Arabia and few elsewhere of terrorist financiers. And I will work with our allies, with the World Bank and international financial institutions to shut down the financial pipeline that keeps terrorism alive. And I will pursue a plan, most importantly, to make this great nation of ours with all of its creativity, with all of our colleges and universities and laboratories and scientists and venture capitalists -- we're going to pull together and we're going to embark on a great journey and make this nation independent of Mideast oil. That is our mission. My friends, I believe in and I want an America that relies on our own innovation and ingenuity, not the Saudi royal family.
Fourth, as president I will make homeland security a real priority by offering a real plan and backing it with real resources. The first task is to prevent the terrorists and their tools of destruction from entering our country. We know that Al Qaida members and other terrorists could cross into America from Mexico and Canada. We're now told that America's borders have actually grown more porous since September 11th, and 9/11 Commission staff report that our border inspectors don't even have the training and basic intelligence information to keep out the terrorists. At our sea ports, we're physically inspecting only 5 percent of the cargo coming into America. The Bush administration is spending more money in Iraq in four days than they've spent protecting our ports for all of the last three years. At our airports, there's been some progress. You all feel it when you try to travel. But there is far more to do.
According to news accounts, the terrorist aviation list includes only those who are categorized as a danger to aviation. This is ridiculous. It should include every suspected terrorist who is a danger to anything anywhere in our country so you can capture them when they present themselves at the desk. That's common sense. Terrorists recently used explosives to bring down two planes in Russia. Yet here in America, I regret to tell you, the system for detecting explosives carried by passengers fails to pass our own government's tests. And here's something that makes no sense at all. Your luggage is X-rayed when it's put on the plane, but the cargo on the hold underneath seldom is. This has to change. In a Kerry-Edwards administration, we'll give our inspectors at our borders access to the terrorist watch lists. At our ports, we will provide a 600 percent increase in support for the most promising cargo inspection programs. In our airports, we're going to install the equipment to check passengers for explosives, to screen cargo just like we screen baggage, and make people fully safe on those planes.
And across the country, we're going to make sure that our police and our firefighters and our ambulance drivers have the latest radios, hazmat suits, decontamination facilities and emergency operation centers that they need to respond effectively to a crisis.
That is the least that we should do to make America safer. This is actually all common sense. But none of it is a priority for the Bush administration.
Here's what's on their agenda: costly, new nuclear weapons we don't need that risk fueling the new arms race, and committing to a missile defense system that could eventually cost $100 billion that doesn't yet work and won't stop the likely threats to our security that come through the Verrazano Bridge in a ship or that carried in in various suitcases and are assembled in a hotel. Near here in Philadelphia region, there are eight chemical plants where a terrorist attack could endanger a million people. But this president allowed the chemical industry to derail common-sense measures for chemical plant security.
My friends, as president, I won't hesitate to protect them. That's protecting the American people.
At a time when police officers are more critical than ever to our homeland security -- this is something Joe Biden and I know a lot about. Because back in 1994 we stood up together and fought to put 100,000 police officers on the streets of America to reduce crime. And you know what? It worked. We did reduce crime. We made our communities safer. But lo and behold, here we are at a time when America needs police who are more trained, police who are even trained as they are in Israel to go out on a patrol and be able to look for terrorists, to think differently about terror -- a whole new kind of training -- guess what this administration's doing? They've gutted the program to put 100,000 new police on our streets. I will restore that funding and make sure that that money reaches our first responders.This president, believe it or not, has even failed in his budget to provide a nickel to safeguard our railroads and subways, leaving millions of people every single day vulnerable to terrorist attacks. We've got more people underneath in a tunnel in certain places in America, the equivalent of six 747s at one moment without escape, without ventilation, without recourse. I intend to invest more than $2 billion in new funding to protect our transit systems so that what happened in Madrid doesn't happen here in the United States of America.
We will win when they once again see America as the America we were on September 12th, when they see us as the champion, not the enemy of their legitimate yearning to live in just and peaceful societies.We will win when we stop isolating ourselves and start isolating the terrorists.
The world...
Sixth, we will promote the development of free and democratic societies throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Millions of people there share our human rights values. They share our hopes for a better life for the next generation. They're facing their own struggle at home against the forces of fanaticism and militancy.
They're our natural allies. Their lost trust in our intentions has to be reversed. We have to restore the position where they trust us again. We have to reach out to them and, yes, we have to always promote democracy, but I will be clear with repressive governments in the region that we expect to see them change, not just for our sake, but for their own survival. As president, I will do what this president should have done years ago and what we need to do, which is lead a massive effort to improve our outreach to the Muslim world. We need to train a new generation of American scholars, diplomats, military officers who know this region just as we built our knowledge of the Soviet empire during the Cold War.
The only solution is a Jewish state of Israel living side by side in security and peace with a democratic Palestinian state. That is what we need to achieve.
As president, I will lead and rebuild strong alliances. This is not only critical to our military operations, it is essential to every other measure that we must take from tracking down terrorists, where we need the cooperation of other nations, to homeland security, where we need their help to stop terrorists and their weapons before they ever reach our shores. If ever the United States of America needed to reach out rather than alienate countries, it is now. The path to success in the war on terror is to recognize working with other countries is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength and it will make America stronger.
My fellow Americans, we will not succeed in destroying freedom's adversaries if we are divided from freedom's friends. The terrorists certainly understand that. They're making a special effort to set off bombs in Turkey, Morocco and Indonesia. They want to keep other countries from standing with us in the war on terror.
They know what the Bush administration has been so reluctant to admit, that we are weaker when we fight almost alone. We are safer and stronger in our capacity to capture and kill the terrorists when we fight with allies by our side.
But the Bush administration would have you believe that when it comes to our allies -- this is what they're telling America today -- that when it comes to our allies, it won't make any difference who's president. They say the Europeans won't help us no matter what. We're not going to get more cooperation in the war on terror they say, no matter what. Ordinary people around the world will resent us, no matter what. Well, I have news for President Bush: Just because you can't do something doesn't mean it can't be done. It can be done.
My friends, it is not George Bush's style that keeps our allies from helping, it's his judgment. And they know that he's not going to change.
But I know that, as always, our allies will follow an America that leaves with sound judgment. And I will provide that.
The first President Bush waged the first Gulf War with a real coalition that fought with us on the battlefield and paid virtually the entire cost of that war. President Clinton built a real coalition in Kosovo, despite the opposition of Republicans in Congress, and now virtually every soldier on patrol there comes from a foreign country. During the Cold War, every American president understood what is still true today: The strength of our country is vital, but so is the character of our country. It is better to be an America that rallies other countries to our cause than to be an America that isolates itself and has to go it alone.
I know that we can win the war on terror. We can defeat, capture and kill those who commit terror. And I've just outlined a strategy for victory, a real strategy.
I know this struggle will be waged in many ways and many places. And I know that it will be a long and a difficult struggle. And I know we have to be resolute in confronting the evil that exists in the world.
But in the end, one of our greatest strengths, one of our greatest safeguards, is that America can be the ideal that inspires others everywhere.
That's who we are. That's America. If we again become that beacon of hope, we're going to discover in ourselves the most powerful and useful weapons in the war against the terrorists. Because if we're true to ourselves, terrorists cannot defeat the values and vision that have made America great.
No American mother should have to lie awake at night wondering whether her children will be safe at school the next day. No one should fear visiting our nation's capital or our greatest cities because they might be attacked. Our hope, our determination is nothing less than this: to live our lives confident that we are safe at home and secure in the world. And that is the great victory that I will fight for and win as your president.
Thank you. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you.





Point 1: It appears that Kerry feels that the Democrat supported legislation to re-institute the draft will pass congress, and if President he would sign it into law. Where else is he going to get the 70,000 + additional troops required to do what he pledges. You may ask where I get 70,000 from. Here is the logic, supported by several military experts. He will increase the armed forces by 40,000. That part is easy. He then plans on expanding our special forces by double the capacity. That means he will have to take already existing soldiers from their units, retrain them for special forces duty, and then also add the additional element of the support for these special forces troops. For every new special forces soldier he adds, a support person must also be added as well.
Point 2: What is different about his plan than the Bush plan. Is he going to impose a fine on rogue countries that supply weapons to terrorist groups? How does he plan to stop them from doing so. Kerry criticized Bush for not locking down nuclear material in former Soviet Republics, but I guess Kerry doest realize (since he only attended 21% of his Senate Intelligence Committee meetings in the 8 years he has served on it) that much of the information the US had on the aresnal of the former USSR was taken from their own files, which were supposedly severely inaccurate. What does Kerry plan on doing? Stationing our military forces in former Soviet Republics to search for, and witness the destruction / disarmament of these weapons? I am confused by what he plans to do.
Point 3: If I am not mistaken, this was priority #1 for the Justice Department after 9/11, and they have been successful in slowing the funds to terrorist, and making it much more difficult for them to get funding, especially through any conduit in the US (which is the only realm that we have any control over).
Point 4: Kerry does nothing to outline what he proposes to do, or how he plans to pay for it. In order to adequately do the job, the border patrol would need to grow by over 15 times its current size, with the budget growing by at least that much. Neither Kerry OR Bush offer anything in the means of a true plan for securing the borders as neither will admit that this is a job for the military. We are one of the only countries in the world that does not utilize its military to secure its borders. Travel the world and prove this otherwise.
Skipping to the last point as I am in a bit of a rush: He will build a larger group of allies? From where? France and Germany said that they would do nothing more if Kerry were elected, so that blows this theory of his out of the water.
In short, Kerry has a plan to do things differently than Bush, but does not have any acutal specifics that he wants to discuss.
Elaine
Elaine
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110005680
THE WESTERN FRONT
A Nuance Too Far
The military is in much better shape than Kerry acknowledges.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
John Kerry has a national-security problem. Anyone wondering why the Democrat is now talking about Iraq and agreed to allow Thursday's presidential debate to be about foreign policy--President Bush's strong suit--need only look at the polls that forced Mr. Kerry to refocus his campaign two weeks ago. In one of them, a New York Times/CBS survey, 60% of likely voters didn't think Mr. Kerry could handle an international crisis. That's not a healthy number for a challenger during wartime.
To beat this voter assessment, Mr. Kerry is trying to make the case that the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less secure because it has degraded international alliances, military readiness and efforts to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. We've heard the international alliance argument ad nauseam, and Ayad Allawi handily dispelled doubts about whether the U.S. is making any allies in the Middle East. Indeed, Iraq's prime minister sounded a lot like Mr. Bush in telling a joint meeting of Congress that the Iraqis understand the sacrifice Americans are making and will help win the war on terror.
The third component of Mr. Kerry's strategy, however, is not so easily dismissed. Whether or not Iraq eventually proves to be a quagmire, keeping 138,000 troops engaged in a shooting war halfway around the world isn't easy, and some signs of strain are beginning to show. The U.S. is pulling back some troops from the demilitarized zone in Korea and repositioning troops out of Western Europe to better meet security needs. Without the war in Iraq, such rebasing may not have proved necessary. The military is also using "stop loss" rules that prevent soldiers from leaving the service while their unit is deployed in a combat zone. And, of course, since Sept. 11 the military has leaned heavily on the reserves--partly because military police and other sought-after skills are heavily concentrated there.
Last summer a rash of reports of low morale in the Army appeared in the media. Today we see similar reports that the National Guard is likely to miss its recruiting goals this year in part because reservists aren't happy with long combat deployments and won't reup at the end of their enlistments. Mr. Kerry hopes to take the concern about military strain one step further by telling those likely to be most affected--service members and their families--that during a second term Mr. Bush would make their lives a lot harder. Mr. Kerry has said Mr. Bush has a "secret plan" to escalate the war after the election, and while other Democrats keep raising the specter of a return of the draft, Mr. Kerry says what the administration is doing amounts to a "backdoor draft."

The problem for Mr. Kerry is that there isn't a lot of substance to these attacks. Wars are tough and they are costly, but that doesn't necessarily mean the military is weaker as a result. Fighting an insurgency in the heart of the Middle East has arguably made the U.S. military more adept at identifying the bad guys in that part of the world. The combat lessons they're learning on the battlefields of Iraq are making their way back into military classrooms in the U.S.What's more, Iraq is proving to be the front line in the war on terror. The Marines stationed near Fallujah are camped out in a massive complex that housed four terrorist training camps during Saddam Hussein's regime. The military is also successfully killing and capturing terrorists every day in Iraq. With al Qaeda operatives active in Iraq and foreign fighters comprising half or more of the "insurgents" killed in some battles, it's really a misnomer to describe what's going on there as an insurgency. No patriotic American enjoys seeing American servicemen killed in battle, but most of us would rather see the war on terror fought out in the streets of Najaf than in New York.
It's true that the National Guard will likely report 51,000 new recruits this year, 5,000 short of its goal. But that's only half the story. The number of people trying to get into the military isn't decreasing. In fact a record number of students applied to the Air Force Academy this year. One of the reasons the military is finding it hard to hit its recruitment numbers is that the force size is actually increasing. The military is larger now than it was on Sept. 11 because the administration has been able to add about 20,000 troops to the rolls temporarily. Meanwhile, Congress is readying legislation that would add as many as 30,000 soldiers to the Army along with 10,000 Marines. And yesterday the New York Times reported that the Army is considering getting away from 12-month deployments in Iraq in favor of six-month combat tours. That's what the Marines do now, and they aren't having any trouble meeting their recruiting goals.

Mr. Kerry knows he's rallying his base when he complains about firehouses being opened in Baghdad and money going to the war effort rather than "after-school programs" and when he says this is "the wrong war at the wrong time." But he's also hoping to avoid the fate of George McGovern, while also capitalizing on the natural unease Americans feel while their sons and daughters are in harm's way. Unfortunately for Mr. Kerry, that is likely to prove to be a nuance too far.Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.
Also, I guess Kerry has not read that France and Germany would do nothing different with regards to troops in Iraq even if Kerry were to be elected. He doesnt want to acknowledge this as to do so would admit that he truly has no plan for Iraq.
Finally, in listening to the interview with Diane Sawyer yesterday, Kerry had better get his foot out of his mouth before the debate tonight. Kerry emphatically states that NOW he believes in knowing what we know today about the lack of WMD's, he would not have sent troops to Iraq, which is a total 180 degree turn from what he said just over 6 weeks ago. Also Kerry's explanation of why he voted to give President Bush the authority to use military force, and then criticize Bush for using it is ridiculous, but the media will not push Kerry on this front, as they so desparately want him to win. I think this is why Kerry is going to make the same mistake as Al Gore, and not do a one on one interview with Bill O'Reilly.
Dick Morris may be right (which is rare for him). The Kerry camp may have severely erred by making the first debate about Foreign policy, where Kerry is at his weakest. If Kerry cannot hold his own tonight, then the election may be about over come next week, when the new polls are released.
I do think that both the pay and the benefits for those in the armed forces need to be increased and fortified, and I do agree that this was a central reason why Reagan was able to keep people in the armed forces past their first tour or term.