Why don't we or Kerry tout his record concerning Iran-Contra?

[noahmijo]

Honestly after reading the documents concerning it and seeing Kerry's role in this, this case alone shows without a doubt whose side Kerry is on and it sure isn't the side of Al-Queda or terrorists.

Results matter? well the way I see it while Kerry was busy uncovering an enormous scandal in which deals were being done between Iranian terrorists and murderous contras by Republicans, Democrats especially Kerry were doing all they could to stop this and expose the crooks involved. This is probably why Republicans such as Cheney hate him so much.

I know this type of reading is over the heads of most of the public but still I think people should be aware of this case even if it means breaking it down to a quick 5 minutes, Bush/Reagan made secret deals with terrorists while Kerry worked to uncover them and he questioned the government's wrongdoing.

I don't care what anyone says THAT'S a freakin patriot.

So come on let's get some Iran-Contra vets out here for truth!!

[bryant69]

1. I agree that I admire Kerry's actions there

The problem is that it's damn complicated to explain exactly what was going on and why Reagan and his advisors were so far out of line. And it's even harder to get anybody to listen to what you have to say.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[UdoKier]

3. How confusing is "They Sold Weapons to our Terrorist Enemies"

Or "they ran drugs to make money to give to mercenary death squads in S. America"

I was like 17 when that happened, and I had no trouble understanding it.

[bryant69]

8. You have to assume that they will hold still

But in fact there are about a million smoke screens that the Republicans have created over the years to cloud the issue.

Bryant

[SquireJons]

9. Very confusing to most.

I mean, wasn't that while King, I mean, Sir... no, make that Saint Ronnie was Prez? Nothing bad happened then. How could Kerry attack a nice old man like that?

Have I cleared that up for you?

[UdoKier]

2. Joe "Murderer" Scarborough mentioned Iran-Contra last night...

He actually had the nerve to say that Lawrence Walsh was "mean-spirited" and that it was all over nothing.

:crazy:

[madmax]

4. John Kerry, the man who uncovered Iran-Contra

July 22, 2004 | John Kerry's political education is far deeper than that of senators who have merely legislated. He has journeyed to the heart of darkness any number of times and emerged to tell the tale. It is not simply that the commander of the Swift Boats unit with which Kerry served in Vietnam was the model of the bloodthirsty, bombastic colonel in "Apocalypse Now." Kerry's combat experience hardly ended in the Mekong, but moved into the dangerous realm of high politics.

From his first appearance on the public stage, giving voice as a decorated officer to the antiwar disillusionment of Vietnam veterans, when President Nixon and his dirty-tricks crew targeted him, Kerry has uncovered cancers on the presidency, and this is especially why the Bush administration fears him. He has explored the dark recesses of contemporary history, often without political reward or even acknowledgment. Tarred as a "flip-flopper" by Bush's $85 million TV ad campaign, Kerry in fact is one of the most consistent political leaders of his generation. The truth is a vivid and unbroken line, but only sketchily known.

In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, Kerry discovered the thread that would unravel the Iran-Contra scandal -- the creation of an illegal, clandestine foreign policy apparatus run out of the National Security Council by President Reagan's military aide, Oliver North, and directed ultimately by CIA director William Casey. Kerry had the training and instincts of a prosecutor and was informed by his Vietnam experience. As the first district attorney of Middlesex County (Boston) in Massachusetts, he had smashed the local Mafia. "A central part of my campaign had been the notion that I would bring to the Senate the experience of the Vietnam period, which cautioned me against the kind of illegal activities we were hearing about, and the things that were going on," Kerry explained later. "Literally, I did do an ad hoc investigation."

Kerry surrounded himself on his staff with tough, intelligent and independent-minded investigators, and he ordered them to follow the trail. In south Florida, they found men accused of drug running who were shipping guns to the Nicaraguan Contras and claiming to have been instructed to do so by the National Security Council. They tracked down a Contra advisor in Costa Rica known as "Colonel Flaco," who had evidence that North was involved in financing the Contras with Colombian drug money. The path led further to Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and to Saudi funding sources. Kerry won support from Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to launch an official investigation in large part because of the drug aspect. (Since Vietnam, concerned about the destructive heroin addiction of many veterans, Kerry had keenly followed the geopolitics of drugs and CIA complicity.)"

More: http://archive.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/07/22/kerry/index_np.html

[noahmijo]

7. Anyway you could post the entire article?

I don't have a subscription to this and this will make great info for my freeper father who keeps flip flopping between voting for Bush or Kerry. I spend an hour explaning stuff like this to him, then 5 minutes of Micheal Weiner and he's back on Bush's side.

[emulatorloo]

10. click on "get a free day pass" watch the stupid commercial copy and paste

and send it to your father.

[Old and In the Way]

5. Here's the contrast between Bush and Kerry on terror

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=644861

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...

[Minstrel Boy]

6. He doesn't want to be called a "conspiracy theorist" again.

That's what Cheney called Kerry back in the 80s over Iran/Contra.