Flashback to the 2004 Election Cycle on Port Security: Kerry Was Right

The DSCC released information about Republican Senators and port security earlier today, see my post here. There's a lot of chatter in the blogosphere about this deal, on the left and the right. Ron pointed out in the comments below, that conservative blog was calling Democrats "newly security conscious." However, that is certainly not the case...

On December 17, 2003 John Kerry unveiled a "Plan to Improve Port Security and Prevent Terrorists from Obtaining WMD’s." In another "Kerry was right" moment, John Kerry said:

“In this dangerous world, we don’t know what that cargo really contains. And we can’t afford to continue being in the dark. We screen millions of shoes in airports everyday, but less than four percent of the 21,000 enormous shipping containers that arrive in America’s ports every day. Any one of them could have a biological, chemical, or nuclear weapon inside. We need to invest in and employ new technologies to screen the containers, ships, trains, and trucks that come into this country.”

How ironic, that Kerry saw the need to improve port security over two years ago, yet Bush has done nothing about it. Now in the wake of this UAE state-owned Dubai Port World deal to take over 6 major U.S. ports, it certainly seems as though port security is not really a concern of the Bush administration yet during the 2004 election cycle Bush consistently said it was. In October 2004, Bush was playing politics (as Digby pointed out) when he tried to paint Kerry as soft on National Security:

I will never hand over America's security decisions to foreign leaders and international bodies that do not have America's interests at heart.

Yet, now Bush is willing to turn over control of 6 of our ports to an international based, government owned corporation. What is up with that?

Kerry's December 2003 plan for Port Security, was far from soft and certainly disproves the meme that Democrats did not have a plan or are "newly security conscious"...

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