KERRY AND THE F-14….Did John Kerry really vote to kill every major weapons system for the past 20 years aside from an arsenal of spitballs? Of course not. Fred Kaplan unspins the spin:
This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and implied that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.
Nobody who makes a charge like this really cares about the facts, but you never know. Maybe they’ll come in handy someday if you’re talking to some wavering (but rational) moderate. So go read the whole thing. It’s a devastating article.
