Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who became a war protester, did defend some of his record yesterday, saying he had voted for the biggest Pentagon and intelligence budgets in U.S. history but had also challenged President Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense as well as someweapons systems such as the MX missile.
But the logic in the long run of making such alliances is that Europe's firms will otherwise lose the ability to make some big-ticket weapons, such as advanced fighters, without American help.
Moreover, the Jordanian near-miss underscores the point that we should take no comfort from the fact that the status of suchweapons is unknown, since some of them may wind up being used outside Iraq.