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Peace Action's 2006 Questionnaire: The
Cover Letter Include a deadline. Give the candidates a deadline that is at least a month away. Call them and remind them of the deadline a week ahead of time. Some candidates may not meet your first deadline, but keep following up - you can often get a response through persistence. Let them know that there are consequences for not replying. We included this text in our cover letter: If we don’t receive your answers by the deadline, we may seek the information from your legislative record, public statements, or we may list you as a candidate who refused to respond to our questionnaire. We hope to get your answers so we can compile a fair and comprehensive guide. The
Questionnaire When submitting a questionnaire, don’t forget to ask for the candidate’s signature, and the name and title of the person who prepared the questionnaire. The responses you collect will both help to inform voters, as well as hold the candidate accountable to their stated positions on important issues. 1.
In its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the Bush administration
called for the creation of a new generation of offensive nuclear
weapons, including a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), or
“bunker buster,” and so-called “mini-nukes”
through an Advanced Concepts program. Critics of these programs
expressed concerns about their impact on international non-proliferation
efforts because developing new weapons sends a strong signal to
the rest of the world that the U.S. has no plans to abide by the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. 2.
As part of its drive to build a new generation of nuclear weapons,
the Bush administration has also attempted to reduce the required
preparation time to conduct an underground nuclear test to no
more than 18 months. To allow for the possibility of future testing,
the Bush administration refuses to send the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty back to the Senate for ratification. What is
your position on the resumption of explosive nuclear weapons testing? 3.
At approximately $10 billion per year, missile defense
is America’s single largest weapons expenditure, yet it
has not been operationally tested and offers no protection against
terrorism. Though the Pentagon deployed a ground-based system
in the fall of the 2004, the Pentagon’s top weapons inspector
has expressed doubts about the system, and the CIA has found that
deployment of missile defense would trigger “an unsettling
series of political and military ripple effects.” What
is your position on national missile defense? 4.
After September 11, President Bush removed virtually
all restrictions on U.S. military aid and weapons sales to human
rights-abusing governments. Recipients include Pakistan, Azerbaijan,
Tajikistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Indonesia and others, and all
have “poor” human rights records according to the
U.S. State Department. 5.
The ostensible purpose of the preemptive invasion of Iraq was
to protect Americans by advancing the goals of the global fight
against terrorism. Using this benchmark, the war in Iraq has been
a colossal failure: 6.
The perception that the United States may have long-term ambitions
in Iraq creates resentment among the general population of Iraq
and aids the insurgency in recruiting supporters. By unequivocally
stating that the United States does not seek a permanent military
presence in Iraq, our government would send a clear signal to
the Iraqi people that we fully support their efforts to establish
democracy and exercise sovereignty. What is your position
on the presence of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq? 7.
Documents received through an ACLU lawsuit have shown that Peace
Action has been spied on by the FBI. The FBI has used federal
“Joint Terrorism Task Force” money to spy on the first
amendment activities of Peace Action and many other peaceful,
non-violent organizations including Greenpeace and the ACLU. The
FBI’s surveillance of domestic peace groups, and new information
about domestic Pentagon and NSA surveillance make clear that the
administration’s efforts to stop terrorism are running amok
and focusing, illegally, on the wrong targets. These administration
efforts to strip away civil liberties make us less safe by diverting
money from tracking the real terrorists. If elected, would
you support efforts to stop the administration’s illegal
and sometimes warrant-less surveillance of citizens and domestic
organizations? 8. Part of the United States’ foreign policy is to promote human rights around the world. The horrible abuses documented in photographs from the U.S.-run Abu-Ghraib prison in Iraq have unleashed a fierce debate in Washington over how we can prevent such cruelty, which is illegal under U.S. law and an affront to our own policy on human rights. In 2005, under the leadership of John McCain, Congress passed a measure to prohibit U.S. officials from using torture during interrogations. Many Americans believe that Congress needs to go further to prevent such abuses by setting up an independent bipartisan commission to examine what events and policies led to these heinous acts of cruelty. Did you or would you have voted for the 2005 McCain amendment to prohibit torture and would you support an independent bipartisan commission to investigate previous abuses? ___ I voted
or would have voted for the 2005 McCain amendment to prohibit
torture. 9.
As the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan drag on, the
Pentagon is aggressively collecting personal data on millions
of youth and students to help military recruiters target young
people for enlistment. The federal legislation of the No Child
Left Behind Act’s military recruiting provision (S. 9528)
forces public high schools to give recruiters students’
contact information unless they specifically “opt-out”
(a right most students don’t even realize they have). In
response, H.R. 551, the Student Privacy Protection Act of 2005
amends the military recruitment provisions of No Child Left Behind
by prohibiting military recruiters from contacting students unless
these minors and their parents specifically “opt-in”
and consent to sharing their contact information and receiving
such communications. ___ I support
H.R. 551. ___ I oppose H.R. 551. 10.
In 2007, $460 billion of the Fiscal Year 2007 budget request will
go to the Pentagon. This is 53% of the discretionary spending,
which does not even include the money the Bush administration
will ask for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Three years into
the Iraq War, the Bush administration is still paying for these
wars through “emergency supplementals,” which are
separate from the budget and do not factor into deficit calculations.
To pay for these bloated Pentagon programs, the administration
and Congress cut funding for programs that address human needs,
such as federal student loans, Medicare and Medicaid. Congresswomen
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and Barbara Lee (D-CA) have introduced the
Common Sense Budget Act, H.R. 4898. This bill identifies $60 billion
in unnecessary Pentagon spending which would be transferred to
programs in children’s health care, school reconstruction,
job training, energy independence, homeland security, medical
research, global hunger and deficit reduction. Do you
support the Common Sense Budget Act? 11.
The United States, as a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, has promised to work to reduce its nuclear stockpile.
Currently, the United States has thousands of usable nuclear weapons
in its arsenal. Many argue that maintaining a stockpile of even
3,500 does more harm to our national security than it deters.
Other nations are threatened by our capabilities and are emboldened
to begin and grow their own nuclear weapons programs. How
many nuclear weapons do you think the United States needs? Please
explain:
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