Kerry Campaign: Time to change the conversation

[Old and In the Way]

SBVT is a quagmire for the Senator....the more you respond, the more they reply with more lies. And while you respond back to the lies, they keep other issues from getting the public's attention. Time to change the conversation.

blm posted this last week:

Submitted by A Possum:

"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."


I likes it. It's based on the Washington Monthly article on Kerry and how he worked to stop the funding of terrorism and drug money laundering at BCCI.

This is an important area to pursue in this election. It also acts as a good rebuttal to those who enjoy SMEARING Kerry by accusing him of being a poll-driven political coward. They couldn't be MORE wrong.

excerpt:
>>>>>>
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.sir...

Maybe Bush can get the bin Laden Family for Truth to defend him on this issue........

[Qutzupalotl]

1. I likes it too!

This can be one onslaught. Another might be Kerry's role in uncovering the Iran/Contra scandal. Name names. Some prominent ones are in the administration today.

I still think we can win against the Smearvets, if we continue to expose the flip-flops and inconsistencies--and write to thank Chris Matthews. But a frontal assault is better. Put Bush on the defensive for a change.

[ItsMyParty]

2. chuckle---it looks like a bunch of us are all thinking along the same

lines right this minute, literally. Kentuck just posted something and so did I (We've Got to Get Off this Jag). Hopefully someone, somewhere in the Kerry campaign is working on it as we speak and hopefully they have 'shit' on Kerry. When you're dealing with the Bushes you have to come to the fight with a large bag full of shit.

[Old and In the Way]

4. This is the issue to go after Bush with, IMHO.

How can Bush be counted on to fight a war on terror when the financial backers of terrorists loaned Bush $25MM? This shows Kerry was, early on, working to disable the terrorists while Dimson was enabling them.

The question I have: just how compromised is Bush with his past financial deals/obligations to the Sauds?

[A_Possum]

3. Guess we're all old and in the way ;)

Personally, I'm glad Kerry's got his cool hand at the helm, cause all of frantic running around shooting every which way in the rest of the boat is gettin kind of amusing.

*ducks*