Democrats Opposed Missile Defense Every Step of the Way

Nuclear weapon testing by North Korea would indicate to most sensible people that the United States needs an effective missile defense system to protect Americans and our allies. It certainly would be better to have Japan go missile defense than have Japan go nuclear.

Senator Ted Kennedy isn’t too bright, but he was a genius in opposing President Ronald Reagan missile defense program by always referring to it as “Star Wars”. Kennedy effectively got the press to always refer to this serious and important non-offensive military program with this most disparaging and misleading term.

How did the Democrats view missile defense later on after India and Pakistan had joined the nuclear arms club? See September 11, 2001 Washington Post article Sen. Biden Attacks Missile Defense Plans as Costly, Risky by Steven Mufson. It includes:

■ “In a spirited attack on President Bush's plans for national missile defense, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said yesterday the administration was risking a new arms race … that would never add to U.S. security.”

■ Quoting Senator Biden as saying "in truth, our real security needs are much more earthbound and far less costly than national missile defense."

■ The article notes “Biden's speech was the latest effort by Democrats in Congress to undermine Bush's missile defense plans, as well as his image on foreign policy matters among American voters.”

■ “Moreover, congressional Democrats have been trying to use their legislative clout to scale back Bush's missile defense proposal” “Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee succeeded Friday in cutting $1.3 billion from the administration's $8.3 billion request for missile defense.”

■ “Democrats on the panel also fenced off missile defense funds for tests in the next fiscal year that would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.”

■ “Biden said yesterday that the United States should be a country ‘that doesn't abandon arms control treaties with the excuse that they are relics of the Cold War,’ paraphrasing a Bush speech that criticized the ABM Treaty.”

■ “He said Bush had shown ‘almost theological allegiance to missile defense,’ despite the possibility that systems under consideration would not be reliable. Biden noted that Rumsfeld said in May that if the system worked 70 percent of the time, that would be ‘plenty’ to justify deployment. ‘Folks, 30 percent failure for any national defense system could be called plenty of things, but plenty successful is not one of them,’ Biden said.”

■ “Biden said U.S. deterrence during the Persian Gulf War a decade ago prevented Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction… ‘He had chemical weapons. He had biological weapons. Why did he not use them if deterrence does not work?’ "