Kean poor fit

Recent news reports state that an assessment of terrorism trends by U.S. intelligence agencies has determined that our invasion of Iraq has increased, not decreased, the number of terrorists in the world. Sixteen separate spy and intelligence agencies in our government confirm this. I was startled to recently read a poll that New Jersey's voters think the position on Iraq by U.S. Senate candidate and Assemblyman Tom Kean Jr., R-Westfield, will keep us safer than the position taken by U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-Hoboken. In 2003, Menendez voted against granting President Bush the authority to attack Iraq without further evidence of a threat by that country. Kean's position is that even if he knew then what he knows today -- that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11, there were no weapons of mass destruction and the war would cost more than 2,700 American servicemen and servicewomen their lives -- he would still have voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq. I shake my head and am left with two opinions as to Kean's position: that he has an astonishing lack of judgment or that he's not as independent as he claims to be of the national Republican Party and the 2006 party line. Either way, the Kean name or not, he's not fit to serve New Jersey in the U.S. Senate. Eric B Arrata, Edgewater Park - Published in the Courier Post, October 7, 2006