Kerry Condemns White House Support for Chalabi

[struggle4progress]

Responding to reports that Ahmad Chalabi may have leaked critical United States secrets to Iran, Senator John Kerry on Wednesday blasted the Bush administration for ever backing Mr. Chalabi as an Iraqi exile leader, saying he met him in London years ago and deemed him unworthy of American support.
<snip>

In a 15-minute news conference, his first since May 14, Mr. Kerry disputed Mr. Bush's assessment that Iraq is the main front in the effort against terror and said the administration was creating a "backdoor draft" by repeatedly extending military duty tours. He used the session, which followed a panel discussion on biological weapons, to praise the recent outreach to the United Nations, saying, "All of us want the president to be successful."
<snip>

"The Guard and Reserve have been turned into almost active duty," Mr. Kerry said. "People serving beyond the time of their voluntary service are no longer volunteers."
<snip>

"Of all the issues Senator Kerry could choose to campaign against the president on," Mr. Falkenrath said, "this has got to be his worst choice."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/politics/campaign/03kerry.html


Mr. Falkenrath apparently thinks Mr. Kerry should express admiration for the Administration's cunning choice of Chalabi as an intelligence source for planning the Iraq adventure.

[JI7]

1. fuck falkenrath

and who is falkenrath anyways ?

[struggle4progress]

2. Richard Falkenrath

former "weapons-proliferation expert" at Harvard
former Deputy Homeland security Advisor for *

But from the article, I conclude he's STILL a political hack.

[fearnobush]

3. Falkenrath's statement is very laughable. It just proves how bad

these guys really are at lying. They have no clue on how bad the Chalabi fallout will be. It's one scandal after an other with these criminals.

[Tellurian]

4. And the Kerry campaign should respond:

"Richard Falkenrath, who was until recently a leading White House aide on the subject, said the attacks were akin to Thomas E. Dewey's arguing in 1944 that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was weak on retaking Europe."

First of all, George Bush is no FDR-

Richard Falkenrath's plan and policy for HomeLand Security
remains incomplete and in limbo much like Iraq and the Bush Administration.

Falkenrath says:

"There is no perfect template for what a homeland security strategy should look like," said Richard A. Falkenrath, special assistant to the President and senior OHS director for policy and plans. And the strategy document "is not an operational plan," he said.

As developed, the document breaks homeland security into 10 basic areas and 84 specific activities. Those 10 areas are intelligence and warning, border and transportation security, domestic counter terrorism, critical infrastructure protection, catastrophic threats, emergency preparedness and response, law, science and technology, information sharing, and international cooperation.

Falkenrath admits that "this strategy is incomplete, as it does not deal with the international dimensions of homeland security." It doesn't address the war on terrorism, which the Administration defines as a component of national security. Indeed, Philip Zelikow, director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a forum participant, criticized this bifurcation. He believes "homeland security and national security will eventually be treated as indistinguishable."

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/topstory/8036/8036notw8.html

addendum:

reading to the end of the above article, Bush's only concern was gaining the flexibility of moving money from one account to another.

"On June 6--weeks before OHS released its national strategy--the President sent Congress "a very spare and parsimonious bill," just 35 pages long, creating the Department of Homeland Security, Falkenrath said. "We wanted just enough law to create the department and give it tools to succeed."

"The Administration can work with the bill passed by the House, Falkenrath said, but the Senate bill now being debated "is a different story." That bill, he said, contains "no reorganization authority, no transfer authority ... and there is a lack of personnel flexibility."

The President has asked for authority to move 5% of any budget account to another account to pay for the transition. If the final bill does not contain some transfer authority and other management flexibility--especially personnel flexibility--the President will veto it, he said."

Falkenrath was nothing more than another cloak for the operation of the Bush agenda...The unfettered Manipulation of Tax Payer dollars unsupervised, and accountable to no one for the dispersement of public funds.

[CWebster]

5. Too bad he didn't say anything BEFORE it was

the politically fashionable thing to do.

Could've saved the world alot of grief.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

6. Bush is a fool for following Chalabi

he loses 2 percentage points right there.

[union_maid]

7. Cunning choice

Is that a new term "incredible blunder"?

[struggle4progress]

8. Kerry: Bush snookered by Chalabi 'hook, line and sinker'

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Wednesday he has long had misgivings about Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, now under suspicion for passing secret U.S. government information to Iran, while the Bush administration "bought into Mr. Chalabi hook, line and sinker."
<snip>

"The main front on the war on terror is in 60 countries around the world with al-Qaida and a host of other radical organizations, some of which are in countries that are our friends," he said.
<snip>

Kerry added: "I regret that this administration, for whatever reasons, bought into Mr. Chalabi hook, line and sinker. I think it's cost us significantly."
<snip>

Before the round-table, Kerry told AP Radio that the federal government needs to do a better job of preparing homeland security for a biological attack.

http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2189430,00.html