WM: Kerry's foresight in fighting terrorism.

[blm]

Let the freepers explain how while Kerry was trying to EXPOSE the terrorists and shut down their funding, the Reagan and Bush administrations were working AGAINST his efforts and Boy George was actually involved with financial dealings with the same people as the terror networks.


Bin Laden's bankers

Kerry's record in the BCCI affair, of course, contrasts sharply with Bush's. The current president's career as an oilman was always marked by the kind of insider cronyism that Kerry resisted. Even more startling, as a director of Texas-based Harken Energy, Bush himself did business with BCCI-connected institutions almost at the same time Kerry was fighting the bank. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 1991, there was a "mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding since George W. Bush came on board." In 1987, Bush secured a critical $25 million-loan from a bank the Kerry Commission would later reveal to be a BCCI joint venture. Certainly, Bush did not suspect BCCI had such questionable connections at the time. But still, the president's history suggests his attacks on Kerry's national-security credentials come from a position of little authority.

As the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, Kerry's BCCI experience is important for two reasons. First, it reveals Kerry's foresight in fighting terrorism that is critical for any president in this age of asymmetrical threats. As The Washington Post 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."

Make no mistake about it, BCCI would have been a player. A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama 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."

Second, the BCCI affair showed Kerry to be a politician driven by a sense of mission, rather than expediency--even when it meant ruffling feathers. Perhaps Sen. Hank Brown, the ranking Republican on Kerry's subcommittee, put it best. "John Kerry was willing to spearhead this difficult investigation," Brown said. "Because many important members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did."

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

[A_Possum]

1. Pound on this

I am SOOO tired of the black-is-white, up-is-down stories about Kerry. He's supposed to be so wussy, he's too much a gentleman, bah, bah and bah. Even OUR idiots like that Willie Brown guy was claiming he was too wussy for politics.

And now OLLIE NORTH calls him a liar! Well I guess so, huh Ollie, since he's the one who turned over a rock and you scuttled out. Why are you still on the streets?

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.

[blm]

2. I certainly wish more folks would recognize the import of this article.

The contents of this article should be made into an ad.

[A_Possum]

5. We have to make it into a soundbite somehow

How can we work in sex? :eyes:

[CBHagman]

3. The Washington Monthly is a treasure.

I didn't even know it existed until about nine years ago, but now I can't do without it. It's run on a shoestring but has some amazing articles and writers, plus an editorial board filled with the good guys (James Fallows et al).

[bigtree]

4. Thanks blm, for your work here highlighting Kerry's BCCI efforts

[blm]

6. Thank you. Fortunately there are a few others here who always contribute

to the furtherance of this story like Octafish). In fact, I am pushing this terror angle of the story, but, Karenina posted the article earlier today.

[A_Possum]

7. "Bush did business with Bin Laden's bankers while Kerry...

was fighting to shut it down to terrorist and drug connections."

"Long before September 11, 2001, Bush got a 25 million dollar loan from the same bankers that dealt with bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while John Kerry fought to stop this bank's global laundering of money for drug lords and terrorists. John Kerry shut it down. He's been fighting terrorism at its roots since before George Bush ran for office."

Is that 30 seconds?

[blm]

8. HEHEH....THAT'S what I'm talking about!!!!!

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