First of all, based on some recent news, I want to start by addressing the “missing weapons” situation in Iraq. The NY Times, along with CBS 60 minutes (already discredited for passing along false stories) has done it again. The story in the NY Times about a weapons cache in Iraq that has ‘gone missing’ is demonstrably false. This is the story that the mainstream media and the Kerry campaign have called the October Surprise. Essentially, the NY Times reported that a stockpile of explosives was missing, and the Kerry campaign, including the Senator himself, ran with this story. Kerry used it in several speeches to say that this was an example of ‘The President’s incompetence’ that these weapons were stolen, and that The President was unable to maintain order in Iraq.
Last night, on NBC Nightly News, it was reported that there never were weapons in this particular location. That on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell, no weapons were found at that location and that it was a year before that the UN had the last report that they were there. This report was issued by NBC imbedded reporters who were ACTUALLY THERE. Even in light of this information, today Kerry continued to make these allegations based on what he knows is a false story. Apparently “integrity, integrity, integrity” does not mean all that much to the Senator, who has lied about everything from his military service, to his voting record, to Christmas in Cambodia, to being at Shea Stadium. The man does not have the character to be president, and his criticism of the president in this case is a criticism of our military, whom Kerry implies “commited a major blunder” in letting these weapons disappear.
One more important point for all you out there between the ages of 18 and 35, or with kids in that age range… Kerry has LIED to you about the draft. He is using the politics of fear to make you think you will be drafted if Bush is in office. The President has stated to the American public he will NOT reinstitute a draft. Interesting enough, there was a bill in the House to reinstitute the draft. Guess who sponsored it? Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC). Yes, that’s right...DEMOCRATS tried to reinstute the draft. Kerry knows this, yet he LIES to the American public to stir up fear and anger towards Bush....
Now, onto the issues....
PROMISES AND PLANS
First of all, I think it is absolutly ESSENTIAL to ask someone who is running for office what their plan is. How can you possible say that you are qualified for the office or would do a better job than the other guy if you don’t have a plan? You darn well better have a plan because from day 1 you take office you are the most powerful person in the world and you can’t just run around scrambling to put together a plan. Yet Kerry’s “plans” are sadly lacking in detail. Throughout this season, throughout the debates, throughout his campaign speeches, we hear all his criticisms of the Bush administration and how he has a “plan” to fix it. But we never get to hear what those plans are.
We know exactly what Bush’s plan is. We have seen it in action for the past 4 years and I would argue that it has performed very well.
IRAQ and the WAR ON TERRORISM
We defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan, and have caught or killed 75% of Al-Quaida leadership. Afghanistan held free elections, and women voted.
These elections went more smoothly than ours promise to, since the democrats are once again planning litigation and legal proceedings to make our election process a laughingstock.
We have disrupted terrorist networks around the world. Syria VOLUNTARILY abandoned their WMD program. Yet some would say, ‘Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or the war on terror’.
It is naive to believe that Iraq was not part of the war on terrorism. The terrorist who orchestrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was being harbored in Iraq. A top Al-Quaida operative was travling back and forth to Baghdad for years. Hussein was paying rewards to families of homocide bombers in Israel. He HAD WMDs and used them on his own people. He was pursuing WMDs, and may have had them, even though admittedly we have not found them. Russian intelligence recently confirmed the original British intelligence report about yellow-cake uranium that Bush quoted in his State of the Union address. The 9/11 commission did report that Hussein was not involved with 9/11, which no one, not the Bush administration, ever disputed, however they did report that he was most likely involved in terrorism.
Even putting all that aside, the fact is that Hussein violated 14 U.N. resolutions over 12 years. The final one told him that we would use force if he didn’t comply, and he didn’t. He was also violating the cease-fire agreement from the original gulf war, which dictated that he was not allowed to possess long range missles, which he HAD. He was also not supposed to be firing at U.S. patrol planes, which he WAS doing on a daily basis. So not only did he violate U.N. resolutions, he was violating the still-in-effect cease-fire agreement.
Kerry accused the President of allowing North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons. However, CNN post debate coverage noted that Kerry’s accusation that North Korea got nuclear weapons while Bush was focused on Iraq was a flat out lie. In point of fact, CIA reports from the late 90’s report that North Korea had already obtained the nukes that they promised the Clinton administration they would not get.
In addition, Kerry continues to say that Bush ‘took his eye off the ball’ to pursue Iraq rather than Bin Laden. In fact, Bin Laden was neutralized already, powerless, and on the run. He also accused Bush of ‘outsourcing the capture of Bin Laden to warlords’. Kerry fails to mention that we pursued Bin Laden into those mountains and continued until the Pakistani border. We could not continue that pursuit as it would have constituted a violation of Pakistans sovereign borders in a time when we needed Pakistan as an ally in this war on terror. Kerry is fond of the word ‘outsourcing’ yet seems to have no problem with putting US companies out of work in Iraq since he wants to ‘outsource’ the reconstruction effort to the UN rather than the US. This will cost US companies involved in this effort billions of dollars, yet he continues to accuse the President of being the ‘outsourcing’ president. More on outsourcing later.
Kerry’s politics of appeasement aren’t going to cause these people to hate us any less, or try to kill us any less. The 9/11 attacks were unprovoked. So were all the attacks in the years leading up to that. This was is one that needs to be fought and I’d rather finish the fight, no matter how long it takes, than quit now and open ourselves up to more attacks. BTW, we are not fighting this war alone. We are fighting it with a large coalition.
The only difference is that France (who had more oil ties to Saddam Hussein than most) and Germany are not involved. We have over 30 nations on our side in this and the whole world is fighting this war on terrorism...but just like in most international wars (at least the successful ones) it falls on the US to lead the charge.
Because of George Bush’s no-nonsense policies for dealing with our enemies, we ARE being taken seriously by the rest of the world… very seriously.
France, Germany and Russia might not like it very much, but you can be darn sure they are taking us seriously when we say something. Syria took us seriously enough to voluntarily disarm. Contrast that with Kerry, who says that he will take military action if it passes a “global test”. Countries aren’t going to take us very seriously if they are allowed to decided when we defend ourselves and when we don’t.
KERRY’S RECORD ON DEFENSE
John Kerry has relied on his 4 months of service in Vietnam to show us why he would be a good commander in cheif. He ignores the 30 years since then; the years when he accused the US military of war crimes… putting the lives of his former comrades in danger as they were being held in POW camps. The betrayal of his former friends. Or his 20 year voting record in the Senate, where he was consistenly on the wrong side of defense issues.
During the debates, Kerry was pontificating about parents buying body armor on eBay for their kids, but yet HE was the one who voted against the $87 billion to fund the troops. And Kerry’s “explanation” that he made a mistake in how he spoke about it, didn’t really explain the fact that he DID VOTE AGAINST IT.
Kerry wanted a unilateral nuclear freeze by the US during the cold war. In fact it was the buildup by Ronald Reagan that WON the cold war. Kerry was dead wrong.
He voted against nearly every major weapons system that our troops use.
They are too numerous to list, but as Zell Miller (D-GA) said, if Kerry had his way, all the US military would have to defend us now are spitballs.
He voted against the first Gulf War, angry that the UN wasn’t allowed to lead us.
He voted FOR the International Criminal Court, which would allow the UN to try American Soldiers and American citizens with no burden of proof, and none of the rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
Kerry said, in 1994 during the Cambodia conflict, that if American Soldiers die in a UN-led operation than it is worth it, but if they die in a US-led operation than it is not.
Kerry WOULD, make no mistake, turn over decisions about our national defense to the UN. This is a dangerous man to allow in the White House.
THE ECONOMY
The stock markets were in decline when Bush took office. Still, after that and 9/11, the Bush tax cuts caused the markets and economy to rebound. The markets are up 45% in the past 2 years. Close to 2 million jobs have been created in the past year. We have had the strongest GDP growth in 20 years.
The markets continued to decline after 9/11 until about late fall of 2002. In the month following 9/11 over a million US jobs were lost because of that tragedy. After that the impact of the Bush tax cuts started to be felt out there among every American, and the economy started to pick up steam very quickly. In October 2002 the market bottomed out at around 7700. It could certainly have fallen more, it had plenty of room to do so. However it didn’t, it gained between 2000 and 3000 points during the next two years. We also had the strongest quarter of GDP growth in 20 years.
Kerry rails about deficit spending. Kerry speaking in terms of dollars and cents, not in terms of percentage. You can say that in terms of dollars and cents anything has increase. You could say that gas costs more now than ever, but as a percent of the average American income it is lower than at many points in history. In other words, a person paying for gas in the 50’s was paying more per gallon in terms of their income than we are today. The democrats speak that way about taxes as well. They will tell you that the “wealthiest 1% got thousands more back in taxes than the “poor”. Again, in dollars and cents that is true, but if the “poor” person pays only $400 in taxes and gets $380 back, and the “rich” person pays $20,000 in taxes and gets $8000 back, who got the bigger tax cut? In actuality, EVERYONE got money back as part of the Bush tax custs, and the lower income taxpayers got a bigger percentage tax cut than the wealthy.
Certainly it is nice to have a balanced budget, but rather meaningless as long as inflation stays low. Furthermore, sometimes deficit spending is actually good economic policy, especially when you need to jumpstart a sluggish economy. Reagan understood this and used it to start the best, longest peacetime growth in history. Bush understands it now.
Taking Kerry at his word about rolling back tax cust on the richest 2%, this includes anyone making over $200,000/year. This includes most small business owners, the backbone of the economy, who have been able to hire more people, provide more of their employees with health benefits, and boost the GDP because of these tax cuts. If Kerry rolls them back the reverse effect will be seen in our economy.
Kerry has a nice campaign promise to raise the minimum wage. On paper this sounds nice, in reality a minimum wage increase causes job loss. Employers have only so much to pay their employees. If they are paying 10 employees 5.15 an hour, and the minimum wage is raised to $7 per hour, three employees will lose their jobs, because the company has only so much money for salaries. So now instead of 10 people working, you have only 5. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov) illustrates this trend throughout history.
Kerry will take our economy in the wrong direction… his proposed spending will require 1.5 Trillion more than his tax rollbacks will give him. This will REQUIRE a middle class tax hike, no matter what the Senator claims.
The worst thing that could happen in the middle of a great economic period of recovery started by the President’s tax cuts would be to change that policy.
When unemployment peaked during the Bush administration, it topped out at just over 6%, which historically is still much lower than the average rates. It has now dropped to 5.5% once again, which is actually as low or lower than when Bill Clinton was runnign for re-election. The GDP, employment, the stock markets, consumer spending… this list goes on. Everything is trending in the right direction thanks in part to the economic policies of this president.
SOCIAL ISSUES
Though playing less of a role in this election than in some, they are still worth mentioning.
Kerry is pro-abortion, which is in direct opposition to his suddenly newfound Catholic faith that ‘guides his life’ when he is speaking to Southern or religious voters. Bush is pro-life. However, Bush has said he will appoint Judges to the Supreme Court and Federal Bench who will stricly interpret the Constitution, which is the actual job of the court. Kerry has said he will not appoint any judge who is pro-life. John Kerry is the one with the litmus test, not George W Bush.
Stem cell research is an interesting one, studies have shown that there is as much to be gained from adult stem cell research as embryos. Yet Kerry still wants to destroy babies, to end human life in order to ‘possibly’ find a cure for disease. George W Bush believes in a society that treasures all life, does not cheapen it or end it in the name of ‘science’.
If you are a gun owner, watch out. John Kerry has proposed everything from taxing all guns and ammunition, to harsh gun control laws and bans on many legal firearms. In the third debate, Kerry illustrated the futility of gun control laws, when in an effort to fear-monger, he contradicted himself. He tried to scare everyone by falsely accusing the president of allowing the assault weapons ban to expire. Kerry then told a story about how LAST YEAR, before the ban expired, he was “hunting” and a sherriff pointed out a house where they had done a drug raid and the criminal had an AK-47. This was before the ban expired. If you ban all guns, only criminals will have guns, and they will still get them, make no mistake.
I am very thankful that George W Bush was the president to guide us after 9/11. I think the picture of him hugging that girl whose mother had died shows exactly what kind of man George Bush is… the look in his eyes as he hugs that girl is one of genuine sorrow, compassion and caring. That is the man that I want as my president. (http://www.ashleysstory.com)
George Bush knows how to defend this country. He has done a great job of it for four years now, successfully winning two wars, liberating millions, and making America safer for it. That is the man that I want as my president.
George Bush knows how to manage America’s economy. He has done a great job of it for the past 2 years, after 2 years of adversity, including the terrible events of 9/11. That is the man that I want as my president.
George Bush is a man you can trust, he’s a man I trust, a man who inspires people, who leads with firm convictions, who does not bend when the political winds blow. His steady hand is needed now more than ever.
George W Bush is the man I want as my president. I hope as you read and consider this he is your choice too.
We are a week away, spread the word and let’s make sure we elect the right man for the job, George W Bush.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.