Vote vets ad in the U.S. Senate race
This is an ad running against Sen. Elizabeth Dole in her re-election campaign against state Sen. Kay Hagan right now:
Sponsored by VoteVets.org, it is substantially the same commercial used in the 2006 U.S. Senate campaign against George Allen:
Back in 2006, here's what FactCheck.org had to say about it:
Granato says of the newer armor, "Senator George Allen voted against giving our troops this. Now it's time for us to vote against him."That's false. Allen did not vote against giving troops modern body armor. What the ad cites is a vote on an amendment April 2, 2003, just days before the fall of Baghdad, that would have appropriated just over $1 billion for unspecified "National Guard and Reserve Equipment." It made no mention of body armor. And when the amendment's sponsor, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, took the Senate floor to give examples of the kinds of equipment that might be purchased with this money, she cited "skin reduction exposure paste," "mobile chemical agent detectors," and "collective shelters" for chemical attacks – but didn't once mention buying body armor. Neither did any other senator. Her amendment was killed by a mostly party-line vote.
It is true that in a press release Landrieu quoted the Marine Corps Reserve as saying it needed more "bullet-proof inserts, and tactical vests" before another wave of reservists went to Iraq, among many other items. But neither Landrieu nor any other senator mentioned that during debate.
More importantly, there was already money for buying body armor. As we explain in more detail later in this article, the Pentagon was already in the process of vastly increasing its orders for the latest-model armored vests, and the shortages that plagued some units in Iraq for the first few months of the war were due not to a lack of money, but to the inability of Pentagon contractors to manufacture the vests fast enough to meet the sudden spike in demand, and problems getting the gear shipped to the troops.
The Dole ad cites two votes in the 108th Congress. One is the same as cited in the Allen ad. The other is this one, which appears to have been the same sort of amendment and failed along the same kind of party-line vote.
Draw your own conclusions, but I tend to view this ad as suspect.
