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Shhhh, Eric!! Don’t give away Karl Rove’s big secret!! What are ya going soft?

i continue to be disgusted by the right wing errosion of nuance.

if you think that winning the war on terror means entirely eliminating terrorism, then you are going to be in for a big disappointment. of course, i could be wrong. we did entirely eliminate communism and naziism, so maybe it’ll work for terrorism too. oh, wait……

see, ideas are tricksy. they don’t really die, per se. you can kill all sorts of people, but terrorism will continue, and the best we can hope for in the fight against an idea is to reduce it to a nuisance-level. it sure does sound better to suggest that we can blow it up or win over the “hearts and minds” of all terrorists everywhere, but we can’t. bummer, huh? no argument there. but that’s reality, not rhetorik.

speaking of reality, let’s talk about the draft. if we are to believe that the war in iraq was the right course of action at the right time even knowing what we know today, then this is the policy that we have established: if a country has the materials to make weapons and the desire to make weapons, then we must invade that country. either that is our policy, or we made a mistake in iraq. so if that is our policy, where are we going to get the troops to deal with iran, syria, north korea, etc.? we are stretched too thin as it is, and these “grave and gathering” threats are not going away on their own. “freedom is on the march” afterall. so let’s not pretend that a draft is not a real possibility under this current administration.

politicians will say a lot of things during a campaign, and when people are afraid for their lives, they are more likely to believe things that sound nice even if they don’t make good sense. “the politics of fear” is a strategy that is working quite well for the incumbents this time around, and the realities of common sense are getting lost in the shuffle.

OK turn down the scratchy “psycho” music for a bit and turn on the slavic march. Putin endorses Bush!!! March foward comrade, we shall succeed where those before us failed. Fear is the great straight jacket!!!

Eric-
I remember that first quotation. You’re dead wrong. He said reducing terrorism to a nuisance would constitute the victory in the war on terrorism. Nobody can completely eliminate terrorism, he said, but it can be smothered to the point of almost non-existence.

The Second Article you cite is the Guardian reporting about somebody else’s documentary Again, you take something out of context and get breathlessly outraged and generalized about it.

Then you go for that “9/11 hasn’t changed me” line in an editorial that originates from one of the more tabloid of the New York Newspapers, and then provide an archived NYT link that those of us who aren’t subscribers can’t access. Gee, thanks. I’d really like to know what Kerry, not you, mean by those words, but I suspect that’s not high on your list of priorities.

As for politics of fear, how about your implying that Kerry will bring back the draft, or that the election of Kerry will bring down another 9/11 on voters. And as for the color-coded security alerts, show me one damn terrorist incident that’s protected us from. The absense of our notice of al-Qaeda is not the absence of its presence. (Oh, sorry, you were alleging us liberals didn’t believe in that al-Qaeda crap, my bad. I’ll remain your straw man from this point on.)

I’ll admit I’ll be keeping a close eye on Kerry concerning fiscal discipline, but you know something? I think Kerry will have a hard time beating Bush in terms of Bush’s accumulation of debt. He’s spent us right up to our legal credit limit: 750 billion.

Oh, while I’m at it, Bush is still a conservative, right? I mean, he is against excessive spending and expansion of entitlements, right? Oh, that’s good to know.

As for shared sacrifice, it goes a little like this. Right now, those billions of dollars are coming out of the pockets and the incomes of our children, and they will never be used for anything but paying our debts to both domestic and foreign investors. Bush could have given up on the tax cuts and simply said now is not the time to be building up great debts that our children will have to pay off. My tax cuts are less important than our security.

Kerry was serious about terrorism at a time when your president was sitting on a corporate board doing next to nothing. If you want to go into another spin session and start claiming otherwise, be my guest. That said, however, Kerry has shown more presidential stature in three debates that Bush has shown his entire campaign, and most of his term.

I’m going with Kerry because my gut tells me he’d be a better president. The facts being on his side kind of helps too.

Well, goodnight, sleep tight, and don’t let the Ann Coulters bite.

Kathryn,

I don’t know about entirely eliminating terrorism. For that matter, will we ever eliminate war itself? But isn’t that the real point here? Terrorism is war. Just because they don’t have tanks and aircraft carriers does not mean we are not at war. 9/11 was not criminal mischief, or aggravated bombing, it was an act of war. Kerry doesn’t seem to understand that. The left would rather not face that fact because it is inconvenient to their ideology. Would you agree or disagree with the idea that treating the ‘war on terror’ as an actual war is marching backwards rather than forward?

…”the politics of fear” is a strategy that is working quite well for the incumbents this time around, and the realities of common sense are getting lost in the shuffle.

The ‘politics of fear’ is a trite and tired phrase already. Let me ask you directly, what is your opinion on this BBC series? Do you agree with the basic premise or not?

Stephen,

Use bugmenot.com. Copy and paste the url into their text box and viola!

I also just ‘archived’ that article here: Kerry’s Undeclared War

I don’t know why everyone gets so upset that I quote articles directly. Any ellipsis is purely editing for space. I try not to take anything purposely out of context. Of course the post is my opinion about what is said and my interpretation of what is said.

Kerry is quoted as saying that he wasn’t much changed by 9/11 and I believe it. So what? One of the most revealing chameleon like attributes of Kerry is the following exchange with Matt Bai. The last sentence is the punchline.

On an evening in August, just after a campaign swing through the Southwest, Kerry and I met, for the second of three conversations about terrorism and national security, in a hotel room overlooking the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier. A row of Evian water bottles had been thoughtfully placed on a nearby table. Kerry frowned.

”Can we get any of my water?” he asked Stephanie Cutter, his communications director, who dutifully scurried from the room. I asked Kerry, out of sheer curiosity, what he didn’t like about Evian.

”I hate that stuff,” Kerry explained to me. ”They pack it full of minerals.”

”What kind of water do you drink?” I asked, trying to make conversation.

”Plain old American water,” he said.

”You mean tap water?”

”No,” Kerry replied deliberately. He seemed now to sense some kind of trap. I was left to imagine what was going through his head. If I admit that I drink bottled water, then he might say I’m out of touch with ordinary voters. But doesn’t demanding my own brand of water seem even more aristocratic? Then again, Evian is French — important to stay away from anything even remotely French.

”There are all kinds of waters,” he said finally. Pause. ”Saratoga Spring.” This seemed to have exhausted his list. ”Sometimes I drink tap water,” he added.

Quite some diplomacy going on there eh? Nuance in action.

Besides you guys can admit it, the war on terror isn’t a war is it?

Inside liberal think-tanks, there are Democratic foreign-policy experts who are challenging some of Bush’s most basic assumptions about the post-9/11 world — including, most provocatively, the very idea that we are, in fact, in a war. But Kerry has tended to steer clear of this conversation, preferring to attack Bush for the way he is fighting terrorism rather than for the way in which he perceives and frames the threat itself.

sadly…

the republican viewpoint seems to be more often than not…

kill it…dont ask questions…go to church, dont be gay.

you know…..the more people you hold down…the more will rise up.

however, eric…i admire your punditry….you truly are one of the faithful.

Eric,
Are you trying to put the war on terror on the same bookcase as the war on drugs?

Eric-

You should have read more closely. You completely misinterpreted the article.

Let’s start with some of the first paragraphs:

As New York and Washington were under attack on Sept. 11, 2001, a film crew happened to come upon John Kerry leaving the Capitol. The brief moment of footage, included in a BBC documentary called ”Clear the Skies,” tells us something, perhaps, about Kerry in a crisis. The camera captures Congressional aides and visitors, clearly distraught and holding onto one another, streaming down the back steps of the Capitol building in near panic, following the bellowed instructions of anxious police. Off to one side of the screen, there is Kerry, alone, his long legs carrying him calmly down the steps, his neck craning toward the sky, as if he were watching a gathering rainstorm. His face and demeanor appear unworried. Kerry could be a man lost in his thoughts who just happens to have wandered onto the set of a disaster film.

”I remember looking up at the sky as I walked down the steps,” Kerry told me recently, when I asked him about the film clip. He said that he and other members of the Senate’s Democratic leadership had just watched on television as the second plane hit the World Trade Center, and shortly after that they heard the sonic boom of an explosion and saw, through a large window, the black smoke rise from the Pentagon. ”We’d had some warning that there was some airplane in the sky. And I remember seeing a great big plane — I think it was a 747 or something — up there, but it wasn’t moving in a way that, you know, I was particularly concerned. I remember feeling a rage, a huge anger, and I remember turning to somebody and saying, ‘This is war.’ I said, ‘This is an act of war.”’

After leaving the Capitol on that terrible day, Kerry walked across the street to his office in the Russell Senate building, where he made sure that his staff had been evacuated and was safe. Reluctant to leave Capitol Hill, he watched TV coverage in his office and saw the second tower fall. He called his older daughter, Alexandra, who was living in New York, and his wife, Teresa, who was in Washington. Those who saw Kerry that morning recall mainly that he was furious, an emotion, those close to him say, that comes easily to him in times of trial. He thought it was a mistake to shut down the Capitol, to show terrorists that they had the power to send the United States government into hiding.

”You know, my instinct was, Where’s my gun?” Kerry told me. ”How do you fight back? I wanted to do something.” That evening, sitting at home, he called an aide and said he wanted to go to New York that very night to help the rescuers; he was ultimately convinced that such a trip was logistically impossible. In the days ahead, Kerry would make two trips to ground zero to see what remained of the carnage.

Does “Where’s my gun?” sound like the words of somebody unaffected by the tragedy? Kerry did not lack for the anger and fear everybody felt. At least when Kerry paused, it was for reflection, and not out of fear. And he wasn’t running. No, he was walking. Guess he’s already been through the fire.

As for Kerry’s reticence in that avenue, you only have Karl Rove and people yourself to blame, people all too willing to smear him on the barest nuancing of his words

After months of having his every word scrutinized by reporters and mocked by Republicans, Kerry appeared to sense danger in the most mundane of places. Interviewing him reminded me at times of what I’d read in ”Tour of Duty,” the historian Douglas Brinkley’s flattering account of Kerry’s service in Vietnam. The Swift boat crews on the Mekong Delta and the Ca Mau Peninsula did not aspire to be heroic, although they were. Kerry and the young sailors were given patrol missions that seemed unnecessarily dangerous; their job was essentially to prove the point that Americans could traverse the windy rivers of the delta, rife with Vietcong, and lure the enemy out into the open. They traveled slowly and kept watch in all directions, and if their leader got them from point A to point B and back again without serious casualties, he had done his job.

Kerry seems to find presidential politics in the era of Karl Rove as treacherous as riverine warfare, and he has run for the presidency in much the same way. From the beginning, Kerry’s advisers said that the election would be principally a referendum on Bush, whose approval ratings, reflecting public anxiety over Iraq and a sluggish economy, were consistently low for a president seeking re-election. All Kerry had to do to win, the thinking went, was to meet a basic threshold of acceptability with voters and avoid doing or saying anything that might be fatally stupid. The riverbanks were lined with hostile Republicans and reporters, lying in wait for him, and Kerry’s goal as he sailed upriver was simple: Stay down. Exercise caution. Get to November in one piece.

He’s trying to navigate the treacherous waters your people have made into a minefield. He’s actually doing a pretty good job. Bush has hit more of Kerry’s mines than he has hit Bushes.

Your accusations, relating to the idea that he’s somehow staying in a 9/10 mindset is actually the reverse of the truth:

This is the Republican line on Kerry — that he lacks guts. Kerry’s often wobbly attempt to be both like and unlike Bush in his approach to terrorism and the war in Iraq enabled the Bush team, by the time Kerry and I spoke in August, to portray him, devastatingly, as a ”flip-flopper” who careens from one position to another. In our conversation, Kerry seemed unusually sensitive to these allegations, to the point where he seemed unwilling to admit to having evolved or grown in the way that politicians — or human beings, for that matter — generally do. When I asked Kerry how Sept. 11 had changed him, either personally or politically, he seemed to freeze for a moment.

”It accelerated — ” He paused. ”I mean, it didn’t change me much at all. It just sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing. I mean, to me, it wasn’t as transformational as it was a kind of anger, a frustration and an urgency that we weren’t doing the kinds of things necessary to prevent it and to deal with it.”

Kerry’s worldview, I think actually indicates that he has a darker view of the threat, in many ways. This isn’t a clash of civilizations, but a clash of civilization and chaos.

In other words, Kerry was among the first policy makers in Washington to begin mapping out a strategy to combat an entirely new kind of enemy. Americans were conditioned, by two world wars and a long standoff with a rival superpower, to see foreign policy as a mix of cooperation and tension between civilized states. Kerry came to believe, however, that Americans were in greater danger from the more shadowy groups he had been investigating — nonstate actors, armed with cellphones and laptops — who might detonate suitcase bombs or release lethal chemicals into the subway just to make a point. They lived in remote regions and exploited weak governments. Their goal wasn’t to govern states but to destabilize them.

The challenge of beating back these nonstate actors — not just Islamic terrorists but all kinds of rogue forces — is what Kerry meant by ”the dark side of globalization.” He came closest to articulating this as an actual foreign-policy vision in a speech he gave at U.C.L.A. last February. ”The war on terror is not a clash of civilizations,” he said then. ”It is a clash of civilization against chaos, of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future.”

The reality is, Kerry was thinking in post-9/11 terms, about “The Dark Side of Globalism” when Bush was still working on his daddy’s campaign.

It’s Bush who’s had to play catch-up, and I’d argue he’s still far behind. He’s still thinking in Cold War terms about al-Qaeda, thanks to his own inexperience and the fact that most of his advisors were last in government during the Reagan and Bush presidencies, which means their experience is that of state against state. The reality is, al-Qaeda is not dependent on state sponsorship, but instead on the political sponsorship of extreme elements spread throughout the muslim world, political elements that have already found great sustenance in the free propaganda Bush has provided with our unnecessary war.

Kerry himself has never, and will never rule out war as an option. But he won’t lack the imagination to use other means.

Is it kosher to accuse someone of using propaganda in a post that is purely propaganda itself? I have to say, Eric, that even if you really don’t take things out of context you certainly do interpret them in a way I never would have thought to. For someone opposed to Kerry’s nuance you certainly can read a lot into his words.

Bravo Steven - finally, a *good* summary of that NYT Mag article. Myself, I thought it was fairly thoughtful, in a liberal-elitist sort of way. And it raised an excellent point. From the article, it is Bush, not Kerry, that has adopted a narrow view of the war on terrorism.

In Bush’s view, the war on terrorism is *only* a war between nations - not a war against criminal organizations that carry out terrorist acts. And in fact the idea of finding and prosecuting the criminals responsible for terrorist acts is not high on Bush’s agenda. For fun, let’s look at Bush’s famous “I’m not concerned about OBL” in context:

Q But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became — we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we — excuse me for a minute — and if we find a training camp, we’ll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That’s one of the things — part of the new phase that’s becoming apparent to the American people is that we’re working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

It’s not about OBL, the terrorist mastermind who killed 3000 people using a team of 20 men with box knives, that’s the issue. Bush’s really worried about Afghanistan, the country - and now Iraq. To me this shows that it’s Bush that just doesn’t get it.

BTW, Eric, you might want to think twice about picking up nonsense from liberal wingnuts (yet-to-be-released TV shows in the UK, no less) and then passing them off as liberal consensus, and by implication Kerry’s as well. By the same argument, does that mean that Bush shares the worldview of the Texas Replican party, who advocate a return to the gold standard, abolishing the separaton of church and state, teaching creationism, abolishing social security, the income tax, and the minimum wage?

Bush and Putin are psychos ?

Terrorists and Arafat endorse Kerry because he knows how to end terrorism ?
It makes me feel safe when the terrorists come right out and admit that Kerry knows how to defeat them.
Why hasn’t Kerry done more in the last 20 years if he knows how to solve the problems? Nobody would listen to him? Was he just waiting until the day he becomes President? If he does not win will he help or go back to his corner in the senate and complain about Bush?
Maybe he’ll join Al Gore’s bashing tour.

Stephen:

If Kerry is so very thoughtful and wise on how to treat al-Qaeda, then why, I ask, has he not come forth with something material or substantive? As of right now, his only policy appears to be the unrealistic claim that he will get other countries to help. If he’s had such grand ideas on the war in Iraq, where have the suggestions been? I’ve certainly heard none before or during this election. Too, as a US Senator, wouldn’t he have the President’s ear if he suggested some course of action that might aid in this resolution? Would he necessarily keep those suggestions secret so that he can hopefully become President, and THEN use these magic secrets to help the US get out of Iraq quickly and successfully, hoping to show what a great leader he is? If he doesn’t “lack the imagination to use other means”, where is the imagination in espousing some of these grand ideas that might lead to an early ending to the conflict?

I’d suggest that this is absolutely false. If Kerry has so many bright ideas of how to end the conflict in Iraq, then he has a duty to bring those ideas forth. I, for one, think he is simply an ambitious windbag politician who wants nothing more than to add “President” to his resume.

If Kerry were capable of vocalizing some of his “imagination”, or if he’d been offering suggestions to the President during the course of the conflict, I’d vote for him myself. But he hasn’t been offering suggestions; only spewing forth more of the same old flip-flopping rhetoric.

Jim said:

Too, as a US Senator, wouldn’t he have the President’s ear if he suggested some course of action that might aid in this resolution?

A Democratic senator offering suggestions to President Bush? Well, since Bush tends to fire or retire his advisors who tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, it seems mighty unlikely to me that anything Kerry might have said would have been heard.

Bush isn’t offering us any real ideas on winning the war either. We have his record over the last four years to look at, though.

Not the last 4 years Alejo. The last 20 years.

Okay, the last 20. But if you’re happy with that record you’re seeing a whole different world than I am.

Eric,
Bin laden doesn’t need tanks or aircraft carriers to fight his war.
This war is more like The French and Indian War, albeit with better tech. Terrorism doesn’t need trees to hide behind, it has the whole world to hide in.
You can’t fight an ideology with technology.
It doesn’t matter that we are the most powerfull nation on earth, if we can’t win over the hearts and minds of those that we fight.
This is where Bush fails.

Eric and Jim
Don’t you know you can only be critical of Bush? It doesn’t matter what kerry says, its what the party line thinks he meant to say. Until he changes it again.

kctim —

Of course the same could be said for the Red side. I’ve found that most Kerry supporters are willing to admit his faults. We just feel Bush has more.

So now its John Kerry’s fault that terrorism is such a threat?

“If Kerry is so very thoughtful and wise on how to treat al-Qaeda, then why, I ask, has he not come forth with something material or substantive? As of right now, his only policy appears to be the unrealistic claim that he will get other countries to help.”

If you had to come up with a real plan for ending/controlling global terror, would it be normal to want to know who would help before you came up with an A-Z plan? WHat you do will depend on whos willing to help. Right now, NO ONE is willing to help. Nobody trusts Bush, with good reason.

President Bush ” I talk to World leaders all the time, i know what there thinking?” He talks but does he listen, when he talks does anybody really take him seriously. Like him or hate him, John Kerry has credentials, Bush is a spoiled little rich, son-of-the-president, who doesnt know anything about half the people in his own nation let alone, the nations of the world.
Kerry has more credibility and will get people in involved. Bush thinks the world should be kissing the U.S.’s butt instead of operating as equals. Kerry will reengage world discussion and ACTUALLY LISTEN…AS AN EQUAL.

Stephen:

Its easy to take single conversations or even entire articles out of context and then use that to paint a candidate improperly. I’d say both sides do that quite a bit.

When I look at Kerry in context, I find that his words don’t match up to his actions. For instance, while I don’t think he has an actual “global test”, I do think he places a very high value on the support of our allies and of organizations like the UN. I doubt he would allow them “veto power” over US action, but I do think he would take their positions into too much consideration.

He says he will be tough and resolute, and kill terrorists. Very tough talk. But when given the opportunity in 1991 to ACT tough, he chose not to. He voted against a war that meets the requirements he places on such actions: broad coalition, wide support from allies, approval from the UN.

He talks about how poorly our intelligence services have been misled, but when he had the chance to ACT, he missed 76% of the Senate Intelligence Committee meetings. He didnt walk the walk.

He talked a great story about throwing medals over the White House fence, but his actions showed less fortitude—he ended up admitting that he wasn’t willing to throw HIS medals over the fence. Once again, tough talk followed by weaker action.

An issue that hasnt come up much is his stance on the death penalty. He says he is against it, but then reverses and says he is for it if the crime is heinous enough (ie terrorism). What this really means is that he is FOR the death penalty, but only under certain circumstances. The only difference in this opinion and that of someone in favor of greater use of the death penalty is where to draw the line on what “heinous” means.

It shows an inability on Kerry’s part to form a clear line of decision. The death penalty is essentially a moral question first: Is it acceptable to execute another human being as a means of justice or punishment? Kerry cant even seem to bring himself to face up to that hard question….instead he takes a middle ground position.

In looking at Kerry’s record as a whole, I see this type of thinking repeat itself over and over. Where some see nuance and deep thought, I see an inability to make a clear and firm stance. We of course will disagree on that——you will see the nuance etc and I will see a fence sitter.

To me, this is the crux of it all. How you see this issue really determines how you see Kerry. I recognize that we will disagree on this, and there certainly is room for disagreement. But its clear to me that this is where the rubber meets the road.

to all those who say that Kerry has done nothing in the last 20 years, I’d like to remind you about one thing in particular which, if it were the ONLY thing he had done, would have been enough:

Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler’s check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.

All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry’s investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients—it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to “fight the evil influence of the West,” and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry’s investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America’s first great post-Cold War security challenge.

More than a decade later, Kerry is his party’s nominee for president, and terrorist financing is anything but a back-burner issue. The Bush campaign has settled on a new strategy for attacking Kerry: Portray him as a do-nothing senator who’s weak on fighting terrorism. “After 19 years in the Senate, he’s had thousands of votes, but few signature achievements,” President Bush charged recently at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh; spin that’s been echoed by Bush’s surrogates, conservative pundits, and mainstream reporters alike, and by a steady barrage of campaign ads suggesting that the one thing Kerry did do in Congress was prove he knew nothing about terrorism. Ridiculing the senator for not mentioning al Qaeda in his 1997 book on terrorism, one ad asks: “How can John Kerry win a war [on terror] if he doesn’t know the enemy?”

But legislation is only one facet of a senator’s record. As the BCCI investigation shows, Kerry developed a very different record of accomplishment—one often as vital, if not more so, than passage of bills. Kerry’s probe didn’t create any popular new governmental programs, reform the tax code, or eliminate bureaucratic waste and fraud. Instead, he shrewdly used the Senate’s oversight powers to address the threat of terrorism well before it was in vogue, and dismantled a key terrorist weapon. In the process, observers saw a senator with tremendous fortitude, and a willingness to put the public good ahead of his own career. Those qualities might be hard to communicate to voters via one-line sound bites, but they would surely aid Kerry as president in his attempts to battle the threat of terrorism.

Kerry refused to back off, and his hearings began to expose the ways in which international terrorism was financed. As Kerry’s subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html

Read the article, Bush banked at the same bank as Bin Laden himself.

John Kerry has been fighting terrorism, and those who fund it, since the mid 1980’s when most fools were worried about the crumbling Soviet empire. Bush is the johhny-come-lately to this “worldview” and no amount of negative advertising or spinning will ever change that.

Great article, cali. It’s scary to think that even I have fallen for the Republican spin that Kerry was a do-nothing senator.

So Bush and bin Laden used the same bank, Bush’s buddy was financial advisor for the bin Ladens, Bush’s cousin was the polls reporter for CNN, Bush’s brother is governor of the state that won him the presidency — but it’s all a big ol’ coincidence, isn’t it?

one big happy accident..

oh, and i forgot to point out:

As Kerry’s subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda

Bush banked at the same bank as Saddam Hussein..

one big happy accident.. yes indeed.

think.. then vote.

Cali:

Anything more recent than 1987 for Kerry??

I truly don’t know Kerry’s role in bringing down BCCI, though as I’ve heard it, he was pretty instrumental behind the scenes. But it was 1987—almost two decades ago.

Y’know, in an interview for a new job, were I to point to a company I worked for 17 years ago, while ignoring for the most part the more recent 17 years, I doubt I’d get the job.

joebag,

i agree. it is important when interviewing for a job to talk about recent developments, i only cited the BCCI events to counter the talk about Kerry being weak on fighting the war on terror. Here’s a small sampling of some of Kerry’s most recent work:

bills sponsored by Kerry:

108th congress:

1. S.CON.RES.84 : A concurrent resolution recognizing the sacrifices made by members of the regular and reserve components of the Armed Forces, expressing concern about their safety and security, and urging the Secretary of Defense to take immediate steps to ensure that the reserve components are provided with the same equipment as regular components.

4. S.318 : A bill to provide emergency assistance to nonfarm-related small business concerns that have suffered substantial economic harm from drought.

13. S.1112 : A bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to permit Department of Veterans Affairs pharmacies to dispense medications on prescriptions written by private practitioners to veterans who are currently awaiting their first appointment with the Department for medical care, and for other purposes.

22. S.1838 : A bill to require payments to State and local governments for infrastructure and social services needs in the same amount as the amount of relief and reconstruction funds provided to Iraq.

26. S.1886 : A bill to amend the Small Business Act and the Small Business Act of 1958 to establish the National Office for the Development of Small Manufacturers, to increase the level of assistance available for small manufacturers, and for other purposes.

28. S.1991 : A bill to require the reimbursement of members of the Armed Forces or their family members for the costs of protective body armor purchased by or on behalf of members of the Armed Forces.

34. S.AMDT.281 to S.CON.RES.23 To increase the budget allocation for programs to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and to reduce the deficit.

35. S.AMDT.397 to S.CON.RES.23 To provide for a $150 billion revenue stimulus for fiscal years 2003 and 2004 without adding to the long-term debt.

OK JBOD,
Since you raised the issue, I’ll pursue it.

He says he will be tough and resolute, and kill terrorists. Very tough talk. But when given the opportunity in 1991 to ACT tough, he chose not to. He voted against a war that meets the requirements he places on such actions: broad coalition, wide support from allies, approval from the UN.

What exactly was the American interest here?
We had helped to build up Sadam’s regime to counter Iran. We encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait by stating their border dispute was none of our business. Then we allowed the Kuwaiti’s to progandize in Congress, when in fact, we knew many of the claims of rape, theft and baby killing were untrue. Bush(I) even stated it was about controlling oil prices.

Do we really care who we buy oil from? Did the Saudi’s convince us to intervene because of their close relationship to the Bush family? Did the Saudi’s use that influence to allow US taxpayer’s money and US soldiers to pay a part of what they should have expended to defend themselves?

Because of the invansion the UN supported it. Because of the recent invasion of Iraq, the UN din’t support us. You criticize Kerry for being too UN friendly, then accuse him of not agreeing with the UN.

The issue,JBOD, is US interest, and American lives, not as you flip flop about and accuse Kerry irregardless of how reasoned his votes are and irregardless of how detached from UN politics they are.

The other two issues you raise are so silly I won’t bother addressing them.

I get tired of people saying Kerry doesn’t offer specifics. All you have to do is go to the national security section of his web site. Lots of specifics on all the different aspects of the war on terrorism.

I’m personally impressed with the way President Kerry will refocus Bush’s “cold war” military to fighting terrorists, and how he uses his energy plan as another weapon in the war.

It’s good stuff. Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in more than listening to a bunch of partisan hacks going back & forth.

If you’ve read Barnett’s “The Pentagon’s New Map”, it’s interesting to read Kerry’s plan through that filter. Kerry understands the threat of terrorism and he’s got a clear plan and a worthy goal beyond just killing Arabs.

I begin with this belief: The war on terror is as monumental a struggle as the Cold War. Its outcome will determine whether we and our children live in freedom or in fear. It is not, as some people think, a clash of civilizations. Radical Islamic fundamentalism is not the true face of Islam. This is a clash between civilization and the enemies of civilization; between humanity’s best hopes and most primitive fears. The danger we face today will become even greater if the terrorists acquire what we know they are seeking – weapons of mass destruction, which they would use to commit mass murder. We are confronting an enemy and an ideology that must be destroyed. We are in a war that must be won.

…

I will wage this war relentlessly with a single-minded determination: to capture or kill the terrorists, crush their movement and free the world from fear. To destroy our enemy, we have to know our enemy. We have to understand that we are facing a radical fundamentalist movement with global reach and a very specific plan. They are not just out to kill us for the sake of killing us. They want to provoke a conflict that will radicalize the people of the Muslim world, turning them against the United States and the West. And they hope to transform that anger into a force that will topple the region’s governments and pave the way for a new empire, an oppressive, fundamentalist superstate stretching across a vast area from Europe to Africa, from the Middle East to Central Asia.

…

For al Qaeda, this war is a struggle for the heart and soul of the Muslim world. We will win this war only if the terrorists lose that struggle. We will win when ordinary people from Nigeria to Egypt to Pakistan to Indonesia know they have more to live for than to die for. We will win when they once again see America as the champion, not the enemy, of their legitimate yearning to live in just and peaceful societies. We will win when we stop isolating ourselves and start isolating our enemies. The world knows the difference between empty promises and genuine commitment.

…

we will promote the development of free and democratic societies throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Millions of people there share our values of human rights, and our hopes for a better life for the next generation. They are facing their own struggle at home against the forces of fanaticism and militancy. They are our natural allies. Their lost trust in our intentions must be restored. We must reach out to them and yes we must always promote democracy. I will be clear with repressive governments in the region that we expect to see them change – not just for our sake but for their own survival.

…

I believe we can win the war on terror. We can defeat, capture and kill those who commit terror. I have just outlined a strategy for victory.

I know this struggle will be waged in many ways and many places. I know that it will be a long and difficult struggle. I know we have to be resolute in confronting the evil that exists in the world. But in the end, one of our greatest strengths, one of our greatest safeguards, is that America can be the ideal that inspires others everywhere. If we again become that beacon of hope, we will discover in ourselves the most powerful and useful weapons in the war against the terrorists. Because if we are true to ourselves, terrorists cannot defeat the values and vision that have made America great.

Eric,

Getting a little nervous are we? Not only does that quote not have anything to do with Kerry, it isn’t even from the United States. Should I read newspapers in say, Austria, to take the pulse of the American Right?

As for the other business: Kerry promises to essentially win the war on terror (reduce it to a “nuisance”), and that makes him weak on terrorism in your eyes. Apparently there is nothing that Kerry could possibly say about terrorism that wouldn’t be spun by GOP apologists as more evidence that he doesn’t “get it”.

OOps, Joe I missed the last part about the death penalty.

But I will say this about that. How does the POTUS position on the death penalty affect this country’s law on it? Answer: Zero.

kctim:

Eric and Jim Don’t you know you can only be critical of Bush? It doesn’t matter what kerry says, its what the party line thinks he meant to say. Until he changes it again.

I have a feeling that the second sentence is aimed at me. I personally don’t think of my posts as making kerry say what the party wants. I think of them as pointing out that in context, ignoring the Red Team spin - ie the way a normal human being would interpret things - what kerry says makes sense and is consistent. And its worth doing this because there are so many Red posts that are trying to twist his words - to make them imply things that they were never meant to imply. And it’s definitely worth talking about that - about the fact that the “anybody but Kerry” posters almost always simply trying to mislead people.

So many, in fact, that people start to believe them, just from repetition. In a recent thread Dawn ended up saying, “well, there must be something to it, otherwise we wouldn’t all be talking about it.” Sure, where there’s smoke theree’s fire - or else a smoke screen.

According to FactCheck, Kerry has been consistent in his views on Gulf II, and Bush’s ads showing the contrary are “highly misleading”. To find a time where he’s opposed war in Iraq, you’ve got back to 1991, back when Bush 41 was in office and Bush 43 was lighting up J’s at Camp David. I’ve challenged Bushies over and over to show me a non-partisan site that says he has flip-flopped on this, and nobody’s ponied up. Don’t say it, kctim, unless you can prove it. Otherwise you’re part of a giant lie machine.

1. S.CON.RES.84 : A concurrent resolution recognizing the sacrifices made by members of the regular and reserve components of the Armed Forces, expressing concern about their safety and security, and urging the Secretary of Defense to take immediate steps to ensure that the reserve components are provided with the same equipment as regular components.

Dang! Thanks Cali. That’s one of my pet peeves with the Bush admiinistration right now. I’m glad it’s one of Kerry’s peeves too.

happy to help.

jbod:

When I look at Kerry in context, I find that his words don’t match up to his actions. For instance, while I don’t think he has an actual “global test”, I do think he places a very high value on the support of our allies and of organizations like the UN. I doubt he would allow them “veto power” over US action, but I do think he would take their positions into too much consideration.

Whereas Bush tends to ignore them. Remember, jbod, that on Iraq, many of the allies had essentially the same position as Kerry - sanctions, inspections, pressure, but not full-scale war, and on Iraq, Kerry and the others were right, and Bush was wrong. So now, you’re worried about giving the correct position too much consideration? I just don’t follow this one.

He says he will be tough and resolute, and kill terrorists. Very tough talk. But when given the opportunity in 1991 to ACT tough, he chose not to. He voted against a war that meets the requirements he places on such actions: broad coalition, wide support from allies, approval from the UN.

1991 was a long time ago, didn’t 9/11 change everything? if I was at a job interview…aw, never mind. But if we’re going back to Kerry’s medals and post-Vietnam appearances, should we be weighting them against W’s DUI’s and alcoholism?

He talks about how poorly our intelligence services have been misled, but when he had the chance to ACT, he missed 76% of the Senate Intelligence Committee meetings. He didnt walk the walk.

I love this statistic - does it actually mean anything? I’ve seen congressional sessions where there’s nobody a few staffers taking notes, and one guy droning on and on to put his story in an official record.

An issue that hasnt come up much is his stance on the death penalty. He says he is against it, but then reverses and says he is for it if the crime is heinous enough (ie terrorism). What this really means is that he is FOR the death penalty, but only under certain circumstances. The only difference in this opinion and that of someone in favor of greater use of the death penalty is where to draw the line on what “heinous” means.

It shows an inability on Kerry’s part to form a clear line of decision. The death penalty is essentially a moral question first: Is it acceptable to execute another human being as a means of justice or punishment? Kerry cant even seem to bring himself to face up to that hard question….instead he takes a middle ground position.

Taking a middle ground position is called being a “moderate”, Joe. Some of us are in favor of moderation.

The death penalty is maybe one of those slippery slopes, but if you think Bush is better, look at his administrations record on torture/aggressive questioning. He opened up a can of worms, or if you like, set foot on a slipperly slope, and didn’t look to see where he would land. Or look at his position on stem cells, another middle-ground position that makes no sense from this kind of absolutist morality.

In looking at Kerry’s record as a whole, I see this type of thinking repeat itself over and over. Where some see nuance and deep thought, I see an inability to make a clear and firm stance. We of course will disagree on that——you will see the nuance etc and I will see a fence sitter.

What I see over and over with Bush, is an inability to look at the facts rationally and take a correct stance. Firm doesn’t help if your firmly wrong.

Myth busting by the right has turned out as a fact find work out by the left. However, I have asked this one question over and over again and have yet had one republican even try to answer it.

Now, for all you myth busters would you please show me one time where Bush has been proactive instead of reactive to any issue? You talk about premptive action as a way to fight terror, yet I have never found, heard, or seen one time where the media has not exposed a problem first.

However, I can give you example after example of Bush allowing an issue to divide, endanger, and/or paralize this country, but I can not remeber just one issue Bush has taken the lead on.

Can anybody tell me one besides the tax cuts?

George Bush said yesterday “I will bring back the draft.” It’s there in black and white. Nevermind any words that preceded those ones, or the intent of what he was saying.

Let’s take that quote and run with it!!!!

William:

I recognize your difference of opinion with mine—-and I expected it. That’s why I wrote my post in the manner I did.

Let me respond to points from your post, though:

First, you see the Kerry/”allies” view as being correct, therefore you support it. But your support doesnt qualify it as being correct. You state that as if it is fact, when it is simply your opinion. I disagree with that opinion.

Secondly, whereas Bush has denounced his youthful indiscretions as such, and has pointed to a change in his entire character, Kerry maintains no such change. He simply has tried to nuance his way out of things, by claiming that medals are ribbons and ribbons are medals etc. Its obvious to even the most ardent Bush hater that the George Bush we see today is nothing like the George Bush of 20-30 years ago.

Thirdly, the Senate Intelligence Committee stat is HUGELY revealing. Kerry has been unwilling to say how many of the private meetings he attended, and so we are left only knowing that he missed 75% of the public meetings. His JOB at the time was to oversee intelligence—-he did not do his job. Now he asks us to trust him with an even more important job.

Lastly, in regard to the death penalty, there are varying viewpoints. Yet it is essentially a moral question at its heart. Some beleive it is never morally acceptable to execute another human being as punishment, while others believe it is morally acceptable. Kerry has maintained a position that it is morally unacceptable, yet now has found room to include a position where it is morally acceptable. Pick a position, but only one. This is not moderation. Its plain old fence sitting.

Moderation would be the position that states that the application of the death penalty is flawed, therefore it should be stopped until the application can be done properly. I can accept those who totally disagree, or totally agree with the death penalty, or even those who disagree with its application. What I cannot accept is someone who says it is sometimes moral and sometimes immoral to execute another human being.

WC
Ok, even though its a waste of time and you guys will create something from it, I will give you one.
kerry says he supports our troops, but yet votes against giving them the proper financial aid to help support them.
He supports them but votes against supporting them?
To the people who support the war, kerry says he supports the troops.
To the people who dont support the war, kerry votes to deny money to support the troops.
Is that not flip flopping in order to get votes from both sides?

Since both of these clowns lie and twist their own words all the time, it is only fair that you also look at what type of crazy crap kerry lies about Bush on. In fact, theres a good piece on the lies kerry and the left have been saying about Bush and social security at factcheck.org right now.
Or do FACTS only CHECKout if they support kerry?

PS
Mr. Cohen, I also was not “aiming” my post towards you personally. I read much of what you post on here and I respect your opinion enough to preface my posts directly to you if they are in response to one of your posts.

JBD,
You stated: ” What I cannot accept is someone who says it is sometimes moral and sometimes immoral to execute another human being.”

Although I can understand your logic, do you believe that there is no outrageous act that as Humanity itself should not stand for?

Cali,

You talk about BCCI. I found this article, http://www.apfn.org/apfn/BCCI.htm.

If you review the following paragraph you will notice three names. Ironically they are all DEMOCRATS. You try to infer President Bush’s banking with them, well it was democrats who championed them to access to america’s banking market.

“”Equally important to BCCI’s successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans, beginning with Bert Lance, and continuing with former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, former U.S. Senator Stuart Symington, well-connected former federal bank regulators, and former and current local, state and federal legislators. Wittingly or not, these individuals provided essential assistance to BCCI through lending their names and their reputations to BCCI at critical moments. Thus, it was not merely BCCI’s deceptions that permitted it to infiltrate the United States and its banking system. Also essential were BCCI’s use of political influence peddling and the revolving door in Washington.””

You are way way off base in your theme of John Kerry actually accomplishing something here. BCCI was a cash cow to members of the “DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Bnorth

|However, I have asked this one question over and |over again and have yet had one republican even |try to answer it.
|Now, for all you myth busters would you please |show me one time where Bush has been proactive |instead of reactive to any issue?

Iraq! Bush was the only one who wanted to do something!
The mass graves are no longet being filled!
That’s a good thing in my book! The libs will prentend they never existed and focus on the WMD aspect. But the truth is, we’ve saved a lot more lives than we lost.

There was also this article on Kerry back in 2003 that mentions not only BCCI but also his lead role in bringing the Iran-Contra affair to committee. Another big plus in the character department.

bnorth, so Kerry brings down a cash cow for Dems, and this says what about Kerry?

Cali,

Oh and later in the article it credits a republican attorney general for moving the investigation past a hurdle.

Justice Department personnel in Washington, Miami and Tampa obstructed and impeded attempts by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau to obtain critical information concerning BCCI in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and in one case, a federal prosecutor lied to Morgenthau’s office concerning the existence of such material. Important failures of cooperation continued to take place until William P. Barr became Attorney General in late October, 1991.

“We learned plenty in the process of exploring the details. We found out, for example, that BCCI, through their Chicago branch, greatly funded the television campaign commercials for the 1988 Presidential campaign for Democrat candidate Michael Dukakis. To cut off money for the badly needed television ads for Dukakis, his opponent, GOP Presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush, at the time Vice President, arranged on a holiday, Columbus Day, right before the Election, to mysteriously close up BCCI’s Chicago branch, source of the tv money for Dukakis, claiming “corruption” but not disclosing details.”

Wow your post is so far off from reality. I am still looking for Kerry’s name in all of this.

bnorth

The Traveler,
Check out my comment (3rd) in the Blue colum named Before and After. Thats the problem with the right’s thinking. The debate over Iraq is not Hawk vs. Dove, its about Eagles vs. Chicken Hawks.

Henry,

No I think the debate is about Hawks and Vultures.

bnorth

bnorth said:

If you review the following paragraph you will notice three names. Ironically they are all DEMOCRATS. You try to infer President Bush’s banking with them, well it was democrats who championed them to access to america’s banking market.

I don’t know the truth or untruth of the article, but this logic is interesting. By following that reasoning, Jim Trafficant is a Democrat, Jim Trafficant is in prison, therefore all Democrats should be in prison. Hmm….

Joseph,

>>>

It says that he would do or say anything to get elected.

I also think you are giving too much credit to Kerry in all of this. He was on a committee, and played a “bit part” in the investigation.

bnorth

Alejo,

I am certainly not saying something as simplistic as that. That is in the Democratic play book.

The poster tried to portray collusion between BCCI and Bush senior. As if he was implicitly involved with BCCI. This was obviously meant to show a pairing of republicans and corporate crimes. I showed that that point is more than erroneous. That in fact, the champions of BCCI entrance into our banking system was accomplished by bribery of our “Democratic” individuals listed.

Bnorth

bnorth,
Look at my comment in Before and After, but you may be right about the results.

Henry,
I hapen to be in the millitary(ANG). A lot of my friends are over there right now. All of them voluntered to go. They, like most of the millitary, support the war. We believe that freedom, yes even for others, is worth fighting for.

My apologies, bnorth. I didn’t misread you intentionally.

Henry,

I like your “eagle” format and description. I however disagree with you after that.

I haven’t accepted the notion of everything being bungled. Leadership is a funny thing. How many people who have never been in management, espouse that managers don’t do any work, and sit atop their perch, with nothing better to do than give them grief. These are the same people who 2nd guess every decision to the nth degree.
If they ever become a manager, that crap becomes non-existant. Leadership is “hard work” (I’ll bet you like that one, but it’s true) and sometimes, the right thing is different than what the consensus is at the time.

bnorth

bnorth,

while trying to refute my point, you actually proved it quite artfully. Kerry does what is right, regardless of party affiliation.

I didn’t “infer” that Bush was banking with BCCI, I plainly stated it as fact (which it is). The fact that some corrupt democrats were also implicated is all the better. We need less corruption in Govt., not more.

Additionally, in mentioning the point about the republican attorney general helping move the case forward, you further illustrate how both parties can work together to move mountains. I applaud him for joining the cause.

If you’ll link to the actual Senate report, you’ll plainly notice John Kerry’s name just under the title:

The BCCI Affair
A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations

United States Senate
by

Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown

December 1992

102d Congress 2d Session Senate Print 102-140

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm

btw, linking to an extremist website does nothing to help your cause of promoting the real facts. note the additional article on how the “elite” are setting the stage for WWIII on the website you cite.

But that’s ok, if you won’t take my word for it, perhaps you’ll take the word of a fellow Republican. From the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002062322_timashby14.html

I have been a lifelong Republican. I proudly served as a senior political appointee in the Reagan and elder Bush administrations. But today I am supporting John Kerry for president because I personally witnessed his courage, tenacity and leadership when he waged war against a dangerous international criminal enterprise. Because of that experience, I believe that he is best qualified to lead our country in an era of fundamental threats to our national security.

In 1988, Kerry began an investigation of international drug connections as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations. He discovered that the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a powerful global financial institution, was laundering drug money for Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and serving as banker for some of the world’s most notorious terrorists, criminals and despots, including Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

At that time, I was the U.S. Commerce Department official responsible for Panama and other Latin American countries involved in the drug trade. I held a top-secret security clearance and read CIA reports bluntly describing the bank’s role in drug-money laundering and other illegal activities. I was aware of Kerry’s efforts to stop BCCI’s activities.

I witnessed how Kerry met with opposition in Washington from powerful figures in both political parties. Even President George H.W. Bush, whose son George W. Bush received a $25 million BCCI loan for one of his oil businesses, pressured Kerry to drop the investigation. Finally, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell, formally asked Kerry to end his probe.

Instead, Kerry gave his information to New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who launched a criminal investigation into BCCI. By 1991, the investigation exposed what Morgenthau described as “one of the biggest criminal enterprises in world history.”

A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered bin Laden was among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed, and that the financial network operated by bin Laden today “is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI.”

As one senior U.S. investigator said in 2002, “BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations.” The Washington Post aptly noted: “Years before money laundering became a centerpiece of antiterrorist efforts … Kerry crusaded for controls on global money laundering in the name of national security.”

Unlike the current President Bush, Kerry believes that privilege has its duties and that public service means putting oneself in the line of fire, whether literally in the jungles of Vietnam or metaphorically in the political minefields of Washington, D.C.

I came to admire Kerry during his battle against BCCI, where he revealed himself to be a man of integrity who refused to back down under the pressure of special interests who could have ruined his political career.

Kerry is a person of depth and intelligence who can see all sides of an issue and incorporate all available data before making a decision. The opponents he has faced and defeated during his career have characterized him as vacillating. Such a mistaken view is to be expected in a cynical political landscape where a politician who is contemplative and thorough may seem alien, because such attributes are now rare in our political environment.

In a dangerous epoch — made more so by a president who sees the world in stark black and white because simplicity polls better and fits into sound bites — John Kerry may seem out of place. He is, in fact, in exactly the right place at the right time to lead our country.

During the Reagan and first Bush administrations, Tim Ashby served as director of the Office of Mexico and the Caribbean for the U.S. Commerce Department and acting deputy assistant secretary of commerce for the Western Hemisphere. Ashby, who holds a Ph.D. in international relations, works at the Seattle law firm Hagens Berman, and is studying for his law degree at Seattle University.

I eagerly await your reply.

Alejo,

Apology accepted and appreciated.

bnorth

Cali,

Correct me if I am wrong but what your original post was aimed at was to state that even though John Kerry has not done much in his 20 years in the senate as far a bills are concerned, He did a great service in investigating the BCCI scandal.
And then you only included attachment of the scandal to Bush senior who did banking with a then uncovered illegal banking entity.
Now where in your post did I observe a toast to Kerry’s ability to “do the right thing” even if it hurts those he loves.

You might want to note that the senate report was way way way after the actual downfall of BCCI.

As to Tim Ashby. He has just as much right to an opionion as you or I. Doesn’t make it right or wrong. I believe there is a group of Viet Nam vets with an opionion of Kerry too. Doesn’t make it right or wrong. I am thankful for the privilege of having the ability to have my own opinion too.

bnorth

The Traveler & bnorth,
Although I understand that point of view will not fly in the face of the political elite of this country, our military needs to be able to adapt to a Ninja attitude and fighting capability, we are putting our troops and country at risk.

As far as Bush goes, he has been on vacation while our troops are at war. No bnorth, I am sorry, but Bush has been absent as our Commander and Cheif on this war. We are just now finding out publicly just how slack he has kept the chain of command. While I do not agree with it, I will allow it in peace time; however, while we have people in harms way our president RED,Blue, or Purple better have his/her butt on top of EVERYTHING! And to think I try to live my life peacefully.

Bnorth,

Glad to see that you can at least be rational in this back and forth. I do appreciate that.

Yes, originally my intent was to show that Kerry has been fighting global terrorism, or at the very least had an active hand in trying disrupting the financial backing of it, since the 80’s.

I do however find it somewhat ironic that the Bush family has been party to what most call the financial home to the current global terrorist movement.

I do realize that some time has elapsed from the 80’s, to the present day, but I do not feel that Bush is being honest with the American people when it comes to the long long history and connections between American politicians and these terrorist groups (both Democrats & Republicans). The 2nd point that I was trying to make (infer) is that W has more knowledge about the historical context and rise of this movement than perhaps would be prudent for him to admit during an election cycle.

What particularly appalls me is W’s current use of zealotry, not to mention the political profiteering of 9/11. In particular his portrait of Kerry as someone who has no experience or expertise in this particular area.

I realize that this all comes down to political posturing between two candidates, but I suppose I feel that when something is this critical to the citizens of this country, this gamesmenship should be put to the side.

I will spare you my critique of the current situation of Iraq.

I know we could go back and forth all day citing articles that profess to “prove” our position, but that would do neither of us any good in the end, and would probably convince no one.

Henry,
I really don’t understand anything you just said.
Yes, we’ve had some “chain of command” problems, but remember, the military is a government agency! It’ll never be run 100% efficently.
I’ve seen no evidence that Bush has been “absent as Commander and Chief on this war.” Just what has he “not been on top of?”
And please, PLEASE don’t give me a lib talking point like “he didn’t have perfect intelegence.”

Cali,

“btw, linking to an extremist website does nothing to help your cause of promoting the real facts. note the additional article on how the “elite” are setting the stage for WWIII on the website you cite.”

It was the first thing that came up in my yahoo search. I didn’t even get to the end of it where the other stuff you mention is at. I will be more careful on that credibility meter in the future.

I know what you mean about changing minds, I just like to debate for debate purposes. We all like to think we are right about everything. That’s what intellectualism is all about eh?

I appreciated my dialogue with you and also appreciate your ability to “dialogue with argument” sure is much more fun with no name calling.

bnorth

The Traveler,
Read the Senate and House Arms Services Public Hearings for the last 18 months. Now, I no rocket major, but I do know if a problem gets to the point where we have to take it to congressional hearings to find out what is going on our country ain’t doing something right.

bnorth,

i agree completley. have a good day.

kerry says he supports our troops, but yet votes against giving them the proper financial aid to help support them.

I assume you’re discussing the famous $87B vote. Good question.

Kerry was willing to support a version that paid for it by repealing tax cuts for the rich. This bill had support from many on both sides of the aisle, and might have passed except that Bush threatened to veto it - ie the version Kerry supported.

After voting for that version, which failed to pass, Kerry voted against the final bill. He was registering his disapproval for the final bill for several reasons in addition to fiscal responsibility, including lack of congressional oversight on how the money would be spent.

It wasn’t a flip-flop. This was a political confrontation about tax cuts vs fiscal responsibility. It’s about as fair to say Kerry changed his mind, or wouldn’t support the troops, just because he wanted shared sacrifice, as to say that Bush thinks tax cuts for those that make more than $200,000 are more important than supporting the troops because he was willing to veto the first bill.

Henry,
I’ll admit to being behind in my reading of the congressional hearings.
I guess I just figured that if they found anything wrong, Kerry would be quoting them, instead of making up stuff about how there’s going to be a draft.
If Bush has a plan for a draft that doesn’t involve Congress, he must be a lot smarter than we thought!!!
BTW, I’m not trying to bash Kerry, and there’s a lot about Bush I dissagree with. I just happen to believe that, even though there’s been some problems, Bush has been handleing the war to the best of his ability.

Joe,

First, you see the Kerry/”allies” view as being correct, therefore you support it. But your support doesnt qualify it as being correct. You state that as if it is fact, when it is simply your opinion. I disagree with that opinion.

I doubt we’ll converge on this one, but to defend my statement of fact: Bush often asserted that there was immediate danger from Saddam. Cheney still makes statements like “delay, defer was not an option”. There is always some uncertainty, but we’re pretty darn sure that there were no WMD, no current capability to make them. So on the question - is there an emergency? do we need to rush? - I say it is a fact that Bush was wrong, and Kerry was right.

To clarify, I’ve never said that “wrong” here means “indefensible” - one can certainly defend Bush’s decision on the grounds that it was based on the best information we had at the time, etc. But “defensible in retrospect” is not nearly as good as being right in retrospect.

Secondly, whereas Bush has denounced his youthful indiscretions as such, and has pointed to a change in his entire character, Kerry maintains no such change. He simply has tried to nuance his way out of things, by claiming that medals are ribbons and ribbons are medals etc. Its obvious to even the most ardent Bush hater that the George Bush we see today is nothing like the George Bush of 20-30 years ago.

I respect your opinion, but in my mind, making a political statement like tossing medals is not the same as substance abuse, and doesn’t need the same kind of excuses.

Thirdly, the Senate Intelligence Committee stat is HUGELY revealing. Kerry has been unwilling to say how many of the private meetings he attended, and so we are left only knowing that he missed 75% of the public meetings. His JOB at the time was to oversee intelligence—-he did not do his job. Now he asks us to trust him with an even more important job.

But how do we know that attending those public meetings was important to doing that job? I’m asking quite seriously, I’ve been involved on committees where agendas were followed and published in advance, everything important was in published minutes, and unless you had something to discuss attendence was just a waste of time. Maybe not for 75% of the meetings, but then it wasn’t Washington.

Lastly, in regard to the death penalty, there are varying viewpoints. Yet it is essentially a moral question at its heart. Some beleive it is never morally acceptable to execute another human being as punishment, while others believe it is morally acceptable. Kerry has maintained a position that it is morally unacceptable, yet now has found room to include a position where it is morally acceptable. Pick a position, but only one. This is not moderation. Its plain old fence sitting.

Well, I don’t see why one can’t hold that’s morally unacceptable in some cases but not in others (would you execute Hitler?). I’ll pass on this one, not knowing much of Kerry’s position or the history.

William Cohen,
Please read my first post on this thread.
Was that not a good reason to go to war?
WMD is beside the point. WMD was not the only reason Bush gave before the war and you know it!

WC
You can come up with excuses all day long to defend how kerry voted, but the fact is, kerry voted against the bill that sent money to help support our troops. That says he supports our troops but won’t vote to support them. That can be seen as a flip flop.
If kerry did not vote against the bill that sent 87 billion to support the troops, then I am sorry, I have made an error and stand corrected. But I am pretty sure he did.

Bush promised tax cuts and I got tax cuts. Even though I dont even make 1/8 of $200,000. How was this a tax cut ONLY for the rich?

The Traveler,
The Powell Doctrine calls for the use of overwhleming force to get the job done which Bush and Company objected. I would like to be able to use overwhleming deadly force when dealing with terrorist. While I know many of the Doves would speak out, I have the feeling that the Hawks would cry as well.

The reason Kerry can not speak out about what is going on behind closed doors in Congress is due to the fact that Congress is now using their oversight powers to dictate what is happening in Iraq. Because Americans have a right to know what congress is doing, our leaders have kept most of the hearings low key.

kctim:

You can come up with excuses all day long to defend how kerry voted, but the fact is, kerry voted against the bill that sent money to help support our troops. That says he supports our troops but won’t vote to support them. That can be seen as a flip flop.

Whatever. See it, and call it, what you chose, as long as you understand the facts of the situation - that it was a protest vote, about congress being railroaded into ignoring fiscal issues, not because he’d changed his mind about anything.

Kerry supported funding the troops, and paying for it. Bush supported funding the troops, and increasing the deficit. Senators have to vote up or down on any bill, according to how that vote best expresses their beliefs, just like we have to vote up or down on Kerry or Bush.

If I vote for Bush in 2000 and then again in 2004, have I flip-flopped on nation-building?

Henry,
If congress is running the war “behind closed doors,” doesn’t that mean that they caused the problems you refered to earlier, and not Bush?
Are you trying to say that Bush is not in charge at all? Is that what you meant by “absent as commander and chief?”
Considering the partisanship in Congress, that doesn’t sound right to me.
Seems to me, if that were true, Kerry would have a lot more ammo to use against Bush.
I agree with you that the situation could be improved by using “overwhelming force” against the terrorists. Perhaps Bush, or Congress if you will, is waiting until after the election. We shall see…

The Traveler,
While Congress can only give advice to the administration they hold the pruse strings. Like I said read the congressional hearings and you will find that their advice has been given since May or June of this year. The only thing argument I have about that is how congress started micro managing Viet Nam.

As far as using overwhleming force; Bush wants to use only the military and Kerry wants to put it back to law enforcement so he can use whatever force is necessary without the spotlight on the operations. I’m not sure if that is overwhleming force, but the cloak of darkness is the best way to fight the shadow of terrorism.

Jim Wright-

Kerry is going to do what Bush is failing to do- Fight the War on terrorism on the level it hurts the terrorists the most- where they work and plot. You think it’s just talk, but the fact is, the right kind of talk in the right places, with the right offers can act as a force multiplier, allowing us to hit harder without the need to bankrupt ourselves in a series of futile, unfounded wars. Kerry will take the fight to the terrorists, and take it to them in a way that confounds their expectations and their ability to adapt.

Joe-
Kerry is a man of principles. You may find that hard to believe, but given how many stands Kerry takes that don’t earn him instant popularity, I find it hard not to believe.

Kerry had personal memories of the last major land war we engaged in, so can he be blamed for speaking of the possibility of American dead that haunted the minds of a great many Americans in that day and age? His concerns were that of many people back then. You shouldn’t judge Kerry’s vote, which was by no means a lone one, out of the context of the times.

Besides, in a way, Kerry’s sensibilities were eventually proved correct. We never completely disengaged from that war. Perhaps, in a sense, we’re still fighting it now. I won’t lie to you. I thought it was worth it. But I was about Eleven at the time, and had never known a major land war in my own time, much less my own experience. Anyways, what does it have to do with terrorists?

As for talking about how poorly the intelligence was handled, I think the old saying “You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.” applies. Maybe also LBJ’s famous quote “I don’t know much, but I know chickens*** from chicken salad.” Which is to say that even if Kerry wasn’t diligent on the subject of intelligence, that doesn’t mean that he can’t call the Administration to task on poor intelligence, and it surely doesn’t mean he can’t call the intelligence we based this war on what it is. Even your own Republican-led Intelligence Committee, while going out of its way to pin things on the CIA and exonerate the White House, couldn’t look at that evidence and call it chicken salad. Bush talked tough about bringing the fight to to the terrorists And then proceed to miss the mark by a long shot

As for the medal controversy, he had his ribbons with him, ribbons that represent the medals he received. Were he wearing a dress uniform, they would be the bars on the chest of the uniform that we see in so many war movies. He gave up what he had on hand. Others asked him to throw their’s for them. He did so.

It seems funny to me that you would look at a man who had just lead days worth of protests, who had fought to get veterans allowed into Arlington Cemetary to honor fallen friends, who testified before a national audience, who helped keep a legion of angry veterans calm and collected, and who risked arrest by the political enemies of his cause, and you say that he talks more than he acts because he doesn’t throw away every part of the medal he was presented in a symbolic protest? Methinks you expect too much of the man.

Kerry’s problem is not that he lacks for intellect or follow through, it’s that he sometimes misspeaks himself, gets caught in the complications of the words he says.

If you listen to him, though his decisions, his analysis and his motives are sound. Kerry is capable of great things, and I believe he listed a number of achievements in the last debate, a number of which were included within the time period that you find of concern.

kctim-
I think the Bush we see now is very much like that one from so long ago. Trouble is, Bush has never lost the impulsive, entitled, mean-spirited sensibility. If you want to know who he is, look at the men he hires. Look at the tone of their regard for the Democrats. Listen to him now, throwing out the nasty insults

On your third point, I’d say the SIC stat is about as revealing as a brick wall. So he missed a bunch of public meetings. Is his absenteeism the norm, or the exception. Did anybody ever complain? Not that I’ve heard of. besides, if good intelligence experience is a qualification, Bush fails. He fails on his complete dearth of experience previous to his term in office, and he fails because he’s had two of the worst intelligence failures in US history under his watch

On the death penalty: so you condemn prosecutors and juries?

On the 87 billion:
Why was it required? A budget supplemental is something you pull out when you need to appropriate money that you didn’t originally plan to spend. Why did Bush need one to pay for Body and vehicle armor? Wouldn’t you just get what you need the first time, and budget for reconstruction and military operations when you don’t have a war yet to worry about?

And also, if Kerry believe there was something significantly wrong with that bill, exactly how was he wrong in voting against it. I would think that if troop welfare’s the first thing on your mind, you would not mindlessly pass a bill that might ultimately do no good, or worsen the situation. You can claim Bush is a decisive leader because he’s an executive, not a legislator who has to worry about loopholes, riders, amendments an all that otyher junk.

The record must be seen in context.

So must your tax cuts. You got no more of a tax break than any person earning poverty wages. Meanwhile, an entire bracket was destroyed above you, and the rates lowered. Because of that those people would get thousands, tens of thosands of dollars.

In a time of war.

When we are running nearly five hundred billiond dollars of debt a year.

when we have reached the absolute limit of our nations’s borrowing authority under the law. Your congress is thinking of extending that credit line eve further.

Does it matter to you that Bush has so quickly overspent himself and the nation for the sake of giving the wealthy thousands and tense of thousands, where the rest of us only get a few hundred.

Bush banked at the same bank as Saddam Hussein.

cali_, right you are. With such evidence refute how can I? Bush = Saddam

Woody,

Getting a little nervous are we? Not only does that quote not have anything to do with Kerry, it isn’t even from the United States.

Haven’t you heard? The whole world is voting for Kerry in this election.

Stephen,

I read the whole article. In fact, I printed it out to read it so that I could absorb every nuance of it. I’m tempted to believe that Kerry says he wanted to get his gun because he knows what the ‘right’ response is. For example, what kind of water does he drink? “There are all kinds of waters… Sometimes I drink tap water.” The article is very… what’s the word… ambivalent. It reflects Kerry’s own character.

You say he would never rule out war as an option. Under what conditions? Kerry’s criticism is that Bush rushed to war without a real coalition and without sufficient cause— and I’m just talking about the first Gulf War, when Saddam invaded another country.

I don’t see Kerry as a rock solid fighter. I don’t see any evidence that Kerry would be a good war president beyond talking tough. He said as much in the debates. When he explained and reexplained his global test, or truth test. “Another round of resolutions, whatever it takes,” were his words on what should have been done after threatening the use of force. After 180,000 troops were positioned around Iraq Kerry would have let them sit there for how long? As long as it takes? Takes to do what? Confirm that Sadam is hiding something and refuses to comply? Time for another resolution.

I’m sorry partisanship and ideology has to be involved here because there is work to be done. Unfortunately, Democrats have chosen a low road of undermining the position of the United States in a time of war. I happen to think that most of the things Kerry says should be done in the war on terror, the law enforcement aspect, the intelligence aspect are right. Bush is doing them. But that’s not all we need to do. We must take a proactive role. Invading Iraq was necessary for many reasons. More than just WMD. You know that my position has been that removing Saddam was primarily a moral act rather than WMD. It is a different kind of war.

I think it is Democrats who do not understand this. Democrats have focused exclusively on the state aspect of invading Iraq. The rationales against it are all rooted in the cold war era theory about sovereign states and containment. The states in the middle east were drawn up by Kufir. Infidels. There are no borders in Islam. Invading Iraq did two things, allowed us to truly inspect for WMD, and removed a dictator, freeing 25 million or so people.

The reality is, al-Qaeda is not dependent on state sponsorship, but instead on the political sponsorship of extreme elements spread throughout the muslim world, political elements that have already found great sustenance in the free propaganda Bush has provided with our unnecessary war.

Kerry himself has never, and will never rule out war as an option. But he won’t lack the imagination to use other means.

What was Kerry’s plan to liberate the Iraqi people?

Eric,
No the Hawks are wrong, just like the Doves were wrong. However, us Eagles can see what reality is and will use overwhleming deadly force to prove our point. Keep believing that all democrats are doves, thats what we are hoping you and the terrorists think.

Bush promised Shock and Ahh and delivered a fire cracker. Kerry and many of us Americans told Bush and you to attack Iraq with the capability to ensure the peace. Well, we are still waiting on the peace.

As far as Kerry’s plan to get Iraq right, tell me how much more Bush is going to screw up between now and January.

I don’t see Kerry as a rock solid fighter.

After the Fallujah fiasco, I don’t know how you can see Bush as rock solid,

General Conway took a swing at Bush’s waffling in the face of opinion poll pressure by saying, “When you order elements of a Marine division to attack a city, you really need to understand what the consequences of that are going to be and not perhaps vacillate in the middle of something like that,” he said. “Once you commit, you got to stay committed.”

And,

Democrats have focused exclusively on the state aspect of invading Iraq. The rationales against it are all rooted in the cold war era theory about sovereign states and containment.

That’s weird. Bush is the guy who invaded the nation of Iraq. Bush is now the Kufir trying to keep the nation of Iraq’s territorial boundaries intact. Bush is the guy who is prosecuting the war on terror with a cold war military and a cold war democracy domino strategy that didn’t work for the Soviet Union.

What has Bush done to defeat and discredit fundamentalist Islam? Nothing. In fact, Bush has given them legitimacy - Islam is under assault by America - and he’s given them a goal - kill the Christian crusaders the same way their fathers drove the Godless Communists out of Afghanistan.

If Bush’s goal is to defeat Islamic terrorism - and I’m not sure it is, since I find it hard to believe anyone could cock it up so bad - then he’s a failure.

Oh, and by the way, Iraq had no WMD, no WMD programs, and no meaningful connections with al Qaeda. On Iraq, Kerry was right, Bush was wrong.

Hey Eric, do you think it’s possible to reduce terrorism below the level of a nuisance? I mean, do you actually think we can eliminate it completely?

Perhaps by building a network of satellites with mind-scanning technology that can pinpoint whenever a terrorist thought occurs in the head of anybody on earth (whether an angry American white supremacist, or an angry Saudi student) and then zaps that person with a ray that makes them stop thinking about terrorism?

Seriously, I don’t understand what you think is so wrong with Kerry saying that terrorism should be reduced to the level of being only a nuisance. It seems to me that any sane person would wholeheartedly agree with that.

If we reduced the terrorism level to “nuisance”, I’d be pretty happy. Wouldn’t you?

-Cf

Bush is our saviour and whoever smears him is the enemy of USA and the friend of terrorists.

I seriously suggest the Congress should mount a full investigation into Kerry’s relationship with Saddam, who started the 911!

And all Liberal would reflect where their loyalty should rest.

TheTravler wrote
> The mass graves are no longet being filled!
> That’s a good thing in my book! The libs will
> prentend they never existed and focus on the
> WMD aspect. But the truth is, we’ve saved a
> lot more lives than we lost.

That’s just not true. Saddam wasn’t executing his own people when we invaded - that is, he wasn’t executing his people any faster than half the countries on earth execute people. In 2003, Saddam was just an average dictator in terms of how much killing was going on. Saudi Arabia, for example, is much, much worse. China is much worse.

In fact, there hadn’t been any mass killings in Iraq since 1991. The sanctions and no-fly zones and inspections had succeeded not only in preventing Saddam from getting WMDs, but they also succeeded in stopping him from his propensity to purge undesirable populations.

In 2003, there were no mass killings going on. No human rights groups had issued any complaints about mass killings in Iraq for over ten years. There was no humanitarian crisis in Iraq when we invaded.

In fact, more Iraqis have been killed by the United States military, insurgents, and terrorists in Iraq in the last year and a half than were killed