January 11, 2005 :: Washington Times :: News
President of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney writes in today’s Washington Times on the 55 billion dollars in proposed cuts which are said to be planned for the upcoming defense budget. Gaffney aptly notes, with much justification, that lesser cuts would have been expected from a Kerry presidency, but are quite a surprise coming from the Bush administration:
Actually, a President-elect Kerry probably would not have dared suggest the far-reaching cuts Mr. Bush plans. And he surely would faced difficulty getting them enacted, given pervasive concerns about his judgment on national security. Yet, here we have the spectacle of $55 billion in extensive defense reductions being made by the man who beat Mr. Kerry—largely on the basis of precisely those concerns.
Gaffney goes on to observe that John Kerry had particularly promised to slash missile defense funding, and that the proposed cuts to the missile defense budget are probably not all that dissimilar from what a Kerry administration might have implemented.
Nowhere is it likelier that John Kerry would have cut back Pentagon spending than in the portfolio of the Missile Defense Agency. Yet, here too, President Bush is said to be considering $5 billion in reductions over the next five years. These could essentially eliminate the most promising means of performing boost-phase missile intercepts (namely, using an airborne laser and/or from space); preclude building out the initial, very modest deployment of ground-based interceptors; and sharply curtail sea-based anti-missile defenses. So much for the robust, layered missile defense Mr. Bush promised to put in place.
One may, incidentally, find a sampling of Kerry’s promises to cut missile defense on his website, JohnKerry.com. (Article)
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