September 29, 2004
Flash! President George W. Bush is responsible for the crash of the Hindenburg, the Chicago fire, the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the blizzard of 1888 and 1996, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. Do I need to go on?
Actually, John Kerry and his campaign staff have not blamed the President for those events. Yet. But the list of things for which they do place blame on President Bush is almost as staggering.
The claim: Bush bans stem-cell research.
The truth: "George W. Bush is the only president to ever authorize federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research." (Laura Bush, August 31, 2004)
John Kerry, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton all invoked falsehood when they said there is a "need to lift the ban on stem-cell research." The issue is not research, or funding for research. The issue is federal subsidies.
There should be no restrictions on the private sector, President Bush argued, from a reasonable middle-of-the-road position. Additionally, he said, according to an institutional editorial from The Wall Street Journal, federal subsidies "should be limited to lines that have already been harvested and should not be used to encourage the destruction of embryos."
Our traditional friends, like Ireland, and our current friends, such as Austria and Germany, ban even the private sector from creating embryos for stem-cell research. Kerry and Company would not place such a ban, and would demand that the federal government -- our tax dollars -- pay for the destruction of embryonic life.
The claim: President Bush is to blame because North Korea is producing nuclear warheads.
The truth: North Korea has never kept any part of the Clinton administration's 1994 nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The thugs in Pyongyang used their signature on the document, a document they never intended to honor, to get fuel oil and two light water reactors from the United States.
The Bush administration is demanding that North Korea's weapons program be verifiably dismantled before considering any new agreement. That is too harsh, Mr. Kerry says.
John Kerry's idea of containing Pyongyang is more talk, based on the 1994 treaty. The fact that Clinton-style "talk" produced only deception and a continuation of North Korea's nuclear program seems to be totally lost on Mr. Kerry, who wishes only to maintain the status quo. To prove that Mr. Kerry is his man, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has withdrawn from a six-nation disarmament summit until after the election. In case anyone has any doubt about Kim's mind-set, last week he threatened to turn Japan into a "nuclear sea of fire."
