The establishment supporters are out in full force, but here is what real leadership looks like

[ProSense]

Kerry in 1992 presided over a Senate probe of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

The Oliver North File

All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients--it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to "fight the evil influence of the West," and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge.

<...>

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."

Follow the Money

Kerry on real leadership

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Kerry might be president today. Had it not been for a number of

unfortunate problems.

[regnaD kciN]

9. Kerry WOULD have been president today, had it not been for his IWR vote...

...which allowed Republicans to tag him with the "flip-flopper" label, which probably did a lot to get his vote totals low enough for Blackwell et al to work their vote-counting magic.

It's ironic that probably the only vote Kerry ever cast based on political calculation (he didn't want to be tarred as "soft on defense" after we, as expected, won easily in Iraq) instead of on principle wound up being the vote that torpedoed his political chances. :-(

[EVDebs]

2. But with CIA accounts BCCI was doing other things with it's leadership...

...according to Evil Money by Rachel Ehrenfeld, page 180:

"The BCCI debacle made ts first intrusion into the US presidential race in 1992 and may be more damaging to the Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, than his alleged extramarital affair. Clinton's fund-raiser and confidant, Jackson Stephens, a billionaire from Little Rock who owns the controlling interest of Worthen National Bank in Little Rock, was the person who introduced Bert Lance to Abedi. While Stephens might not have known back in 1977 that BCCI was a criminal bank, Bill Clinton had full knowledge of Stephen's involvement with BCCI when he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Stephens family for his campaign. On the eve of the New Hampshire primary Robert Morganthau was looking into the BCCI/Stephens/Clinton link. In December 1991 The Wall Street Journal reported that Stephens and his bank invested in Harken Energy, a small Texas investment company of which George Bush, Jr, is a board member. The money Stephens invested came through the Swiss BCCI subsidiary."

How deeply did Kerry go into investigating the CIA's domestic spending here at home in political campaigns ? Not too deeply I suppose.

[terisan]

3. Yes Kerry did it but why does he not use it in his campaign?

[globalvillage]

4. First, I just love

the composition of that photo. It's one of my favorites.

I really don't know how some people on this board can disrespect a man who has worked so hard for so long to do the right thing. I have seen the most vicious attacks today, and it's good to look at who it is they're attacking and recall what he's spent his life working for.

Thanks for posting this. An important reminder.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. The most important questions to be asked regarding the

candidates... what will you do to prevent the guilty parties of the past 8 years from skating their proper fate? What will you do to stop the RW hate machine from interfering with your plans for change?? Will Sybil Edmonds be freed to speak and or testify?? And on and on.

[slipslidingaway]

6. Thank you K&R. n/t

[stillcool]

7. Thank you...

:applause:

[politicasista]

8. K&R

:kick:

[K Gardner]

10. Oh, I love this picture ! The other pic I love of him is the one of him testifying

before the Senate after he returned from Vietnam. Thank you ! :hi:

[ProSense]

12. Thanks. I do too!

BREAKING: Kerry makes history

[hibiscus]

11. K & R n/t

[Infinite Hope]

13. Why did the U.S. gov't stand in his way? n/t

[wundermaus]

14. Kerry walked away...

and with him backing down... we've had 4 more years of BuShit... he learned nothing from the coup d'état of 2000.

[ProSense]

15. Kick! n/t