Coleman's out-of-touch record: War and peace

Original Link: http://www.mncampaignreport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1780

by: Jeff Rosenberg

This is the eighth in a series of weekly articles exposing Norm Coleman's record on the issues. For a list of previous articles, go here.
Last week, I started looking through some of the voting history compiled by the good folks at Peace Action West, which illustrates some of Norm "W" Coleman's dangerous votes on foreign policy. Peace Action West is an organization which advocates for "broad-based civic activism to create a strong voice for peaceful and pragmatic solutions to global problems." They developed a Congressional scorecard to highlight Congressmen's votes on foreign policy and peace. Norm "W" Coleman's record is so bad, I had to split it into two weeks. Last week, I covered his support of new nuclear weapons. Here are some more of his bad votes

2003 [pdf link]

Folks, if ever you needed an explanation for why we're still in Iraq, this is it. Coleman voted against an amendment that would prohibit the use of Iraq reconstruction funds for any contract or financial agreement with an entity that pays deferred compensation to the president, vice president, or a Cabinet level official, or any entity in which the president, vice president or Cabinet-level official holds options to purchase more than 1,000 shares of stock (vote #386). That means Coleman voted to make it legal for our own president and vice president to be war profiteers.

2004 [pdf link]

Here's another shocking vote from Coleman. This is proof that when Coleman tells you he's "strong on defense," you should take a closer look. Barbara Boxer introduced what I would consider a very reasonable amendment, providing that Bush's missile defense system could not be deployed for defensive operations until the Department of Defense certified that the capabilities of the
system to perform its defense mission had been confirmed by operationally realistic testing of the system (vote #124). Now just stop and think about that. Norm says he cares about defense, but he's totally fine having a defense system in operation before we have proof that it works properly.

2006 [pdf link]

In a heartwarming vote, Coleman voted AGAINST protecting civilians from cluster bombs. A cluster bomb is an air-dropped bomb that ejects multiple small bomblets. They are very inaccurate and unreliable, and wreak havoc when used in civilian areas. The amendment Coleman voted against would have required the administration to certify the weapons would not be used in civilian areas before the US could sell, transfer or acquire cluster bombs (vote #232).

2003 - present

I don't have the space to list the number of bad votes Coleman has made on Iraq. The war is just another of Bush's failed policies that Coleman lined up behind. You can check out any of the Peace Action scorecards for some of Coleman's worst votes on Iraq.

The bottom line: Norm "W" Coleman isn't making us or anyone else safer. He's voting to reward war profiteers and allow innocent civilians to be killed. Perhaps even more disturbing is the thought that he doesn't want to bother testing out our country's missile defense system before putting it into action. We can't trust Norm Coleman on defense; it's time to send a new Senator to Washington.