Question Number Four: Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Aug. 9 that he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found. How does this affect the way you view his credibility on the issue of national security?

Sen. John Kerry has promised to "reform" the intelligence system to enhance national security and, since he was a sitting member of the intelligence committee, one would think that he would be well positioned to recommended sweeping and aggressive changes. The only problem is that he attended only 11 of the 49 public hearings (missing 77 percent of the public hearings) between 1993 and 2001. He missed the June 8, 2000, hearing on the National Commission on Terrorism, during which the committee was warned about terrorist threats faced by the United States and recommendations made to address the threats.

In 1994, a year after the first World Trade Center attack, Kerry missed every single hearing, including the hearing at the Joint Security Commission. He complained that most of the meetings were "closed-door," meaning that the attendance figures are not made public, but he has offered no evidence of his attendance at those meetings, either. Other members of the committee, including Republicans, are declining to reveal whether Kerry did or did not attend the meetings but did say that they would release the attendance records if Kerry requested that they do so, and to date Kerry has not made such a request.

John Kerry was, however, more consistent on Iraq than on possibly any other issue between 1990 and 2003. His positions on Iraq were as follows:

October 1990: "Today, we are confronted by a regional power, Iraq, which has attacked a weaker state, Kuwait. . . . The crisis is even more threatening by virtue of the fact that Iraq has developed a chemical weapons capability, and is pursuing a nuclear weapons development program." (Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, Oct. 2, 1990, p. S14330)

November 1997: "It is not possible to overstate the ominous implications for the Middle East if Saddam were to develop and successfully militarize and deploy potent biological weapons. We can all imagine the consequences. If Saddam were to develop and then deploy usable atomic weapons, the same holds true." (Congressional Record, November 9, 1997, pp. S12254-S12255)

1998: "Americans need to really understand the gravity and legitimacy of what is happening with Saddam Hussein. He has been given every opportunity in the world to comply. Saddam Hussein has not complied. Saddam Hussein is pursuing a program to build weapons of mass destruction." (news conference, Dec. 12, 1998)

July 10, 2004: According to the Boston Globe, Kerry and John Edwards accused the Bush administration of misleading the nation and of manipulating intelligence analysts to win support for the invasion of Iraq, though both senators stood by their votes authorizing the war.

Now Kerry has promised to withdraw our troops from Iraq within the first year as the French and Germans bring in their troops. John Kerry says that the French and Germans will send troops in place of the Americans to secure Iraq. Reporters covering the both embassies say neither country has given any indication that they would be willing to send troops for any reason.

Kerry, who said on Aug. 1, 2004, that it was time to realign troops away from Cold War stations and towards the new threat matrix, said on Aug. 16 that it was a mistake to move the troops from Germany and South Korea.

So Kerry is going to remove troops from the only place on the planet where America faces a national security threat (the Middle East) and keep the very troops he said he would move three weeks ago stationed in Germany and South Korea.

Now, what we have is a presidential candidate who has said for 13 years that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were threats to national security, that Iraq had WMD, and that Saddam would use those weapons. President Bush, having seen the same intelligence information that Kerry apparently had seen (maybe Kerry read the reports instead of attending the meetings), and dealing with the aftermath of an attack more devastating than Pearl Harbor, determined that, based on those intelligence reports, Saddam was a threat to national security and removed him from his government.

Now candidate Kerry says Bush had "misled" us into a war based on false information about WMD - which means that Kerry, too, was wrong about Iraq for the last 13 years.

People say Kerry has a credibility problem. My question is: What credibility?