March 06, 2004

Senator John Kerry's Non-War on Terrorism By Barbara J. Stock
Kerry Will Abandon War on Terrorism

The Democratic Party's presidential front-runner, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), has pledged that if elected he will abandon the president's war on terror, begin a "dialogue" [Quotation marks mine!--Jen] with terrorist regimes and apologize
for three-and-one-half years of mistakes by the Bush administration.
[...]
Perhaps frustrated that his radical departure from the war on terror was not getting much attention in the trenches of Democratic Party politics, Kerry ordered his campaign to mobilize grass-roots supporters to spread the word. In one e-mail message, obtained by Insight and confirmed as authentic by the Kerry camp, the senator's advisers enlisted overseas Democrats to launch a letter-writing and op-ed campaign denouncing the Bush foreign-policy record.

"'It is in the urgent interests of the people of the United States to restore our country's credibility in the eyes of the world," the message states. "America needs the kind of leadership that will repair alliances with countries on every continent that have been so damaged in the past few years, as well as build new friendships and overcome tensions with others."

The e-mail succeeded beyond the wildest dream of Kerry's handlers - at least, so they tell Insight. It was immediately picked up by the Mehr news agency in Tehran, and appeared the next day on the front page of a leading hard-line daily there.
[...]
The hard-line, anti-American Tehran Times published the entire text of the seven-paragraph e-mail under a triumphant headline announcing that Kerry pledged to "repair damage if he wins election." By claiming that the Kerry campaign had sent the message directly to an Iranian news agency in Tehran, the paper indicated that the e-mail was a demonstration of Kerry's support for a murderous regime that even today tops the State Department's list of supporters of international terrorism.

According to dissident Ayatollah Mehdi Haeri, who fled Iran for Germany after being held for four years in a regime prison, Iran's hard-line clerics "fear President Bush." In an interview with Insight, Haeri says that President Bush's messages of support to pro-democracy forces inside Iran and his insistence that the Iranian regime abandon its nuclear-weapons program "have given these people the shivers. >They think that if Bush is re-elected, they'll be gone. That's why they want to see Kerry elected."
[Which is also why I want to see President Bush re-elected!--Jen]

The latest Bush message, released on Feb. 24, commented on the widely boycotted Iranian parliamentary elections that took place the week before. "I am very disappointed in the recently disputed parliamentary elections in Iran," President Bush said. "The disqualification of some 2,400 candidates by the unelected Guardian Council deprived many Iranians of the opportunity to freely choose their representatives. I join many in Iran and around the world in condemning the Iranian regime's efforts to stifle freedom of speech, including the closing of two leading reformist newspapers in the run-up to the election. Such measures undermine the rule of law and are clear attempts to deny the Iranian people's desire to freely choose their leaders. The United States supports the Iranian people's aspiration to live in freedom, enjoy their God-given rights and determine their own destiny."
[...]
Kerry foreign-policy aide Beers tried to nuance the impression that Kerry was willing to seek new ties with the Tehran regime and forgive the Islamic republic for 25 years of terror that began by taking U.S. diplomats hostage in Tehran in 1979 and continues to this day with Iran's overt support and harboring of top al-Qaeda operatives. Just the day before the e-mail message was sent to the Mehr news agency, Beers told a foreign-policy forum in Washington that Kerry "is not saying that he is looking for better relations with Iran. He is looking for a dialogue with Iran. There are some issues on which we really need to sit down with the Iranians."

The word "dialogue" immediately gives comfort to hard-liners, says Ayatollah Haeri. While Beer's comments went unnoticed by the U.S. press, they were prominently featured by the official Islamic Republic News Agency in a Feb. 7 dispatch from Washington.

So, he'd "talk nice" with the mullahs...Yeah, that worked out really well for America under Jimmy Carter, as did his cave-ins to the NorKs, who are also wishing for the election of the Carter-like, Clintonian "dialogue"-loving Kerry:
North Korea Seen Unwise to Wait for End of Bush

North Korea is staunchly in the "anybody but George W. Bush" camp in the U.S. election, but South Korean critics of the president say Pyongyang would be unwise to stall nuclear talks and hope for "regime change" in Washington.
[...]
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper captured this view in a cartoon that showed a jubilant North Korean leader Kim Jong-il calling expected Democratic Party nominee John Kerry's campaign headquarters and asking: "Is there anything I can do to help?"

North Korea's state controlled media have not commented at length on Kerry, but they have cited approvingly the U.S. senator's criticism of Bush's rejection of bilateral nuclear deal-making with Pyongyang.
[...]
North Korea analyst Paik Hak-soon of the Sejong Institute in Seoul said Pyongyang could not afford to let the rest of 2004 run out without progress on the 17-month-old nuclear crisis.
[Actually, the nuke crisis is really 10 years old, it's just that Clintoon and Madame (Albright) were too dim to realize that the joke was on them when they thought we'd made a "deal" with them.--J.T.]

"North Korea has serious issues such as security and a sluggish domestic economy," he said. "Actually North Korea is the one fighting against the clock."

Gee, and if Kerry wins (God forbid and I pray daily that He will.), then both Iran and North Korea can get whatever they want from the West and from the U.S. by using NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL!!!
Great plan, Sen. Ketchup!
(Oh, and Kerry, you should also get the Mother Theresa Award for all the compassion and concern you show for the millions of poor, oppressed, imprisoned and murdered citizens of North Korea and Iran, too!)
And stop talking about removing President Bush as a "régime change!"
We don't have a "régime" in this country, mister!
It's a constitutional republic.
Your pals Kimmy and the Mullahtollahs are the ones you need to yammer about "régime change"-ing!