CLAIM vs. FACT: Bush on Non-Proliferation

CLAIM:
“[Non]-Proliferation is one of the centerpieces of [my] multi-pronged strategy to make the country safer.”
- President Bush, 9/30/04

FACT:
“In his fiscal year 2005 budget request to Congress, released just a week earlier, Bush did not substantially increase funding for these programs and actually proposed cuts to the Department of Defense component as well as suggested spending shifts in programs in the Departments of Energy and State.”
- Arms Control Association, 3/04

FACT:
The Bush administration tried to cut funding for chemical demilitarization in the 2005 federal budget. These programs help reduce chemical weapons stockpiles.
- Army Magazine, 3/04

“[Bush] officials were attempting to persuade 65 skeptical governments at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that much delayed negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, or “fiss-ban” (ending the production of fissile material for military purposes), should proceed without considering any verification rules.”
- The Economist, 9/2/04