Part 4 of the Kerry Report "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy" now on Memory Hole

[beachmom]

http://thememoryhole.org/kerry/

I found this info via this blog:

http://pong.tamu.edu/wp/?p=70

I started reading this before (parts 1, 2, 3), and it is actually gripping stuff. This whole underworld I had known nothing about. Check it out if you can. It's one of the reasons we are here -- because Kerry fought for open government.

[BlueIris]

1. Thanks for that. His work to expose this corruption is one of the reasons I started supporting him

in 2004 (long story).

[Noisy Democrat]

3. Totally awesome

Thank you so much for posting this! I love it that this group is such an amazing gatherer of information about all things Kerry. I can't imagine all the things I'd miss out on if I had to find it all for myself. I'm very interested in this period in JK's career, so I'm doing the happy dance over this one.

[karynnj]

2. That report is incredible and the degree to which people have tried

(with some success) to hide it still amazes me. I remember back in 2005 when Tay Tay wrote "bed times stories" about this time period. I had followed the news since I was a teen, yet I never knew this full story. I actually did not want to believe it because, at its heart it is painful to believe that the leaders of our country could so cavalierly allow lives and communities to be destroyed in this country. (I did know the wrongs done in Central America.)

I have a sister who teaches in an inner city in NW Indiana. I remember her speaking in the late 1980s - about how hard it was to teach little 6 or 7 year olds who had been crack babies. She also spoke of how troubling their lives were as seen by their art work and oral stories. This was a town my family left when I was in sixth grade. We moved to a suburb as part of such a large wave that I knew several people in my new school from younger grades at my old school. So, it was going down hill even in the 1960s, but the schools and libraries were still good. When my sister started at the school in the mid 1980s it was because it was very highly regarded for the innovative work done to teach urban kids. This was the type of community they were willing to sacrifice.

Kerry stopped this by exposing it, but it is such a hard truth that it may be believed only in the future when people don't have to give up their respect or even love of a President they trusted and believed in. It hurt me because once I believed that what Kerry wrote was the minimum that happened, because he included only what he could prove, I knew that it could not have been just Republicans who allowed this to happen. It would take a very incompetent Governor for huge quantities of drugs to enter a state and for him to know absolutely nothing. I now think BLM is entirely right about Clinton covering up for GHWB and I can't help but think that the reason was that exposing it would call into question his own complicity or competence. The measure of push back on DU, which is the left of the party, that she has gotten to the idea that WJC was guilty of covering it up shows that we fall victim to the same reluctance to accept hard truths. (I am not saying Clinton was complicit, but that it can not be ruled out completely with no examination.)

It is a measure of how incredibly skilled Kerry is as a politician that after bringing the country unpleasant truths that people still don't completely at heart believe that he still was chosen as the nominee and in a fair election would have won. Look at what he was saying in each case. 1) Vietnam - he said the leaders were sacrificing lives (at least half of those lost) to save face. 2) With the Contras - that leaders would allow drugs in the country to illegally arm RW thugs in Central America. 3) BCCI - where powers that be who we don't even see were co-opted into allowing a bank that facilitated the money flows of terrorists and international drug runners. Kerry knew back when he fought Nixon that it could make it hard for people to accept him years later as President, but it didn't stop him in fighting the two other issues.

Starting to learn these things in 2004 is why I became so enthusiastic that this man could become President. There was also almost a feeling that he was running a stealth campaign showing his incredible breath of knowledge on so many issues and competing very successfully using only his more conventional accomplishments - without speaking of the fact that in both the Contra and the BCCI efforts he stopped things that if known and accepted stopped very dangerous bad things. Those efforts had to be made and there were few in government with the combination of the willingness and courage to fight these battles, the position to do so, and the skills needed.

As you said this is why we are here.