[Mb-civic] positive spin on Kerry

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1266305,00.html

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Kerry's war didn't end in the Mekong 

Tarred as a flip-flopper by Bush, he hasn't wavered since Vietnam 

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian 

John Kerry's political education is far deeper than that of senators who have 
merely legislated. He has journeyed to the heart of darkness many times and 
emerged to tell the tale. It was not simply that Kerry's commander in Vietnam 
was the model of the blood-thirsty bombastic colonel in Apocalypse Now. 
Kerry's combat experience didn't end 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 anti-war disillusionment of 
Vietnam veterans, when Richard Nixon and his dirty-tricks crew targeted him, 
he has uncovered cancers on the presidency. This is why the Bush 
administration fears him. He has explored the dark recesses of contemporary 
history, often without political reward. Tarred as a "flip flopper" by Bush's 
$85m TV ad campaign, Kerry in fact is one of the most consistent politicians 
of his generation. 
In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, he discovered the thread 
that would unravel the Iran-contra scandal - the creation of an illegal foreign 
policy apparatus run out of the national security council by Reagan's military 
aide, Oliver North, and the CIA director, William Casey. Kerry had the training 
and instincts of a prosecutor. As a district attorney in Massachusetts, he 
smashed the local mafia. Now, as senator, he has surrounded himself with 
tough investigators. In south Florida, they found men accused of drug-
running who were shipping guns to the Nicaraguan contras and claiming to 
be instructed by the NSC. They tracked down a contra adviser 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. 
(Concerned about heroin addiction among Vietnam veterans, Kerry had 
followed the geopolitics of drugs.) 

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 North learned of Kerry's work and told the Secret Service and the FBI that 
Kerry was protecting a possible presidential assassin. The FBI harassed 
"Flaco" and determined he was no threat, but he was intimidated into silence. 
Republican staffers leaked information about Kerry's investigation to the 
Reagan White House and justice department. An assistant US attorney in 
Florida, prosecuting a case based on Kerry's leads, was ordered by the 
justice department to drop the matter. Virtually the entire Washington press 
corps dismissed Kerry's effort as a fantastic delusion and ignored it. 

In October 1986, Kerry questioned the neoconservative assistant secretary of 
state for Latin America, Elliot Abrams, who brazenly lied about foreign 
funding for the contras. This testimony led, in time, to Abrams pleading guilty 
to a felony. (He was pardoned by Bush Snr and is now NSC chief for Middle 
East policy.) 

A month later, the Iran-contra story broke in a Lebanese newspaper. 
However, Kerry was excluded from the congressional investigating 
committee for the sin of having been prematurely right. As consolation, he 
was given chairmanship of the subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and 
international operations. After three years, he reported that "individuals who 
provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking; the supply 
network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organisations; and 
elements of the contras received financial and material assistance from drug 
traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the US government had 
information regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring, or 
immediately thereafter." 

Kerry's work on the contra-drugs connection led him to discover a link to 
BCCI, an international banking operation that was a front for drug running, 
money laundering and terrorism. He launched an investigation that exposed 
its criminal "corporate spider web" in 1992. His report pointed to new areas 
that should be investigated, including "the extent to which BCCI and Pakistan 
were able to evade US and international nuclear non-proliferation regimes to 
acquire nuclear technologies". 

>From Vietnam onwards, Kerry has probed the inner recesses of government, 
pursuing a persistent and cumulative investigation into the underside of 
national security and terrorism. If the Democrats had held the Senate for a 
sustained period of time, his proposal to regulate the netherworld of money 
laundering, which was not enacted, might even have helped stymie al-Qaida. 
He has experienced the abuse of justice; had his patriotism impugned; 
battled enemies foreign and domestic; tried to restore accountability; and 
fought on, down to today - which is why he is running for president. 

· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and 
Washington bureau chief of salon.com 

sidney_blumenthal at yahoo.com



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