Half-Cocked

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October 31, 2004

Why I'm Voting for John Kerry

Ambimb has been looking for people giving reasons to vote for Kerry, not just against Bush. I've been compiling a list over the last couple of months and here's some of what I've come up with.

• John Kerry is reality-based. He uses the facts at his disposal to arrive at conclusions and then makes decisions based on his conclusions. When the facts change, he is not afraid to adjust his conclusions based on those changes. This is preferable to the current administration's process of arriving at conclusions and then finding or creating facts to explain them.
• John Kerry is a bulldog - Contra cocaine. When he perceives injustice or corruption, he goes after it and doesn't let up. After receving information that pointed to U.S. agencies turning a blind eye to the importation of cocaine into the United States by supporters of the Contras in Nicaraugua, he investigated. Despite major stonewalling by the Reagan administration, he uncovered quite a bit. He was called a conspiracy theorist for years and it wasn't until the late 90's that he was finally proved correct.

  The CIA inspector general and Justice Department reports confirmed that the Reagan administration knew from almost the outset of the Contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the CIA-backed army but the administration did next to nothing to expose or stop these criminals. The reports revealed example after example of leads not followed, witnesses disparaged and official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged. The evidence indicated that Contra-connected smugglers included the Medellin cartel, the Panamanian government of Manuel Noriega, the Honduran military, the Honduran-Mexican smuggling ring of Ramon Matta Ballesteros, and Miami-based anti-Castro Cubans.

  Reviewing evidence that existed in the 1980s, CIA inspector general Hitz found that some Contra-connected drug traffickers worked directly for Reagan's National Security Council staff and the CIA. In 1987, Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veteran Moises Nunez told CIA investigators that "it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC."

• John Kerry is a bulldog - BCCI - Kerry's investigation into Contra cocaine trafficking led him in another direction, the terrorism funding of one of the world's most respected financial institutions, the Pakistan-based Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). This investigation met even more stonewalling because powerful people from both parties were involved with BCCI at some level. Kerry didn't give up, though, and eventually the bank was taken down.

  But Kerry refused to back off, and his hearings began to expose the ways in which international terrorism was financed. As Kerry's subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda.

  And BCCI went beyond merely offering financial assistance to dictators and terrorists: According to Time, the operation itself was an elaborate fraud, replete with a "global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad."

  By July 1991, Kerry's work paid off. That month, British and U.S. regulators finally responded to the evidence provided by Kerry, Morgenthau, and a concurrent investigation by the Federal Reserve. BCCI was shut down in seven countries, restricted in dozens more, and served indictments for grand larceny, bribery, and money laundering. The actions effectively put it out of business what Morgenthau called, "one of the biggest criminal enterprises in world history."

• John Kerry understands fighting terrorism entails more than just sending armies into foreign lands with no plan. - First, Kerry has intimate first-hand knowledge of how terrorism is funded via his investigations into BCCI. Given this, would Kerry have waited until earlier this month to move to freeze the funds flowing to al Zarqawi and his band of beheaders operating in Iraq? Kerry also sees that our first responders are woefully underfunded and that our ports, factories and airlines aren't nearly as secure as they should be. Allowing corporations to go soft on security because it may cost them money is not the right strategy. They choose to operate chemical plants, nuclear power plants and large container ships. They need to be responsible.
• John Kerry, like George H.W. Bush, recognizes the boondoggle that is something-D-O-O economics. - The Congressional Budget Office found that the 1/3 of the recent tax cuts went to the top 1% of earners. Is Warren Buffett going to spend that extra couple of million he got? He's already spending as much as he's going to spend. Now if the tax cuts were more directed at the people making below $250,000/yr as Kerry aims to do, we'd see people making use of their tax cuts. If I had a couple extra thousand dollars, I can say with the utmost certainty that a good portion of that money would wind up in the pockets of a contractor to put in a second bathroom in the basement. That helps small business. Giving huge tax cuts to multi-millionaires does not.
• John Kerry understands that a healthy society is a productive society. - Kerry has a workable plan for making sure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. To me, health care is a right, not a privilege. What's more important than the lives of a nation's citizens?
• John Kerry is against the death penalty - John Kerry was a prosecutor. He understands crime. I've never seen an argument for the death penalty that is able to account for the way its applied without the argument devolving into Old Testament eye-for-an-eye reasoning. I've also never heard anyone a good case for the death penalty as a deterrent. Does someone planning a cold-blooded murder include the death penalty in their calculus? They either think they are going to get away with it, or they're too crazy to care.
• John Kerry is for same-sex civil unions. - Why shouldn't homosexuals have the same kinds of rights under the law that heterosexual couples have? Whether churches want to hold marriage ceremonies is up to them, but churches don't make the laws. Voters in this state passed a Defense of Marriage Act a couple of years ago. My marriage doesn't need the government to defend it.
• John Kerry is an environmentalist. - Ever since, as Lt. Governor of Massachusetts, John Kerry organized governors to address the issue of acid rain back in the early 1980's, Kerry has been one of the biggest defenders of the environment in the Senate. I have a lot of friends who dismiss the environmental issues because they live in a city and aren't into biking, camping, fishing, hunting, etc. That shouldn't matter. What should get their attention is the increased costs for food, fuel and health care that come with a contaminated environment. The operative word in EPA is Protection. Let's do that.
• John Kerry believes that his religious faith should be kept separate from his governance. - Kerry won't have Pentacostal ministers helping direct Middle Eastern policy because they believe the Rapture won't happen until the Holy Land is a completely Jewish state. Kerry believes in science and that the Colorado River, over millions of years, carved the Grand Canyon. Stem cell research holds many promises for the future. Stopping it isn't going to stop abortion. Researchers don't stand on the street corner and recruit pregnant women to have abortions and pregnant women don't have decide to have abortions based on their desire to advance science. There are far too many instances of religion overriding science in our current administration for me to cover. And it scares me. We demonize the Islamic states for ruling based on religion when there are some who want to do the same here.
• John Kerry believes in the Constitutional right to choose. - No one is pro-abortion. If we could create a society in which no woman felt the need to get an abortion, we'd all be better off. If the Supreme Court overturned Roe, abortions wouldn't stop, and more women would be at risk. Instead, we need to look at the root causes of abortion - Lack of education and economics. Sexual education is something that has been sorely missing over the last few years, and the poverty rate has increased. At the same time, over a hundred thousand young men have been called overseas. Not exactly a recipe for decreasing the abortion rate.

I could go on and on and on, but I lack the time. Besides, the readers of this weblog, liberal and conservative, have already made up their minds and I'm not about to change them.

Posted by Half-Cocked at October 31, 2004 02:02 PM

Comments

Excellent survey of just a handful of the excellent reasons to vote for Kerry. And finally, a pithy distillation of that whole BCCI issue that discusses Kerry's achievements and why they're relevant to his qualifications for the office of president. Thanks for the work putting this together!

Now I just wonder: Why hasn't his campaign been putting out good little "white papers" like this to explain Kerry's long record to voters? Too late for that now, I guess...

Posted by: ambimb at October 31, 2004 09:14 PM

I've been screaming for his campaign to talk about BCCI for a long time. I guess it's too complicated for voters to digest. Not really, though. They could have just said, "In the Senate Kerry led an investigation that resulted in the world's largest funder of terrorism being taken down."

I realize I missed a lot of stuff. Patriot Act rollback, for one.

Posted by: Steve at October 31, 2004 09:30 PM