Saturday, August 28, 2004

The kind of man John Kerry is.

Here's an article, and a subject, that should get more play in the blogosphere and beyond. John Kerry is frequently targeted by the Republicandroids in the media and the Bush campaign as being wishywashy and without conviction. This is far from the truth. His behavior from VietNam to the Senate hearings thereafter to his work as a prosector to his work on Capitol Hill show a man of great resolution and tenacity. He may have authored few bills which passed the Senate (it should be remembered that Dick Cheney, another longtime legislator, has a similarly minimal history of legislative success), but anyone who sees his Senate career as unaccomplished is either ignorant or blinded by ideology.
The article describes how Kerry singlemindedly destroyed a criminal enterprise with its grimy tentacles in everything from drug-smuggling to anti-western terrorism. This is the story of BCCI. It's the story of how a Senator risked his reputation chasing after the most sinister of criminals while presidents Reagan and Bush tried to shut him down, while the Democratic establishment wanted his probe stopped.
It also should not be forgotten that, prior to his work on BCCI, Kerry was among those spearheading the inquiries into Iran-Contra, and largely responsible for identifying Manuel Noriega's connection to the Medellin cocaine cartel.
And let's not forget the contrast presented by the article. At about the same time Kerry was working to shut down this nefarious bank that had among its clients Abu Nidal, the Medellin cartel, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush was borrowing money from a BCCI subsidiary. Isn't it just some sort of sick poetry that Bush was borrowing from a bank that laundered money from anti-American fanatics and Mafiosi?
I'm kind of curious why Kerry isn't doing more with this part of his biography. Perhaps time will tell.