This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: John Kerry

  • Israel; “Messianic” John Kerry should “leave us alone”

    Pinto Nag sends us a link to NBC News which reports that Israel isn’t really all that happy that John Kerry, who served in the Vietnam War, is mucking around in their region;

    Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s defense minister, was quoted by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Tuesday as saying that the only thing that could “save” Israel was for Kerry to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and “leave us alone.”
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    “Secretary of State John Kerry came here very determined and operates based upon an unfathomable obsession and a messianic feeling,” Yaalon was quoted as saying. “Throughout the recent months, there is no negotiation between us and the Palestinians, but rather, between us and the Americans. The only thing that can ‘save’ us is that John Kerry will get a Nobel Peace Prize and leave us alone.”

    The State Department isn’t too happy about the characterization from our former ally;

    “The remarks of the Defense Minister if accurate are offensive and inappropriate especially given all that the United States is doing to support Israel’s security needs,” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a statement.

    I guess it hurts that the rest of the world sees Kerry the way most of America saw him in 2004.

  • The Night Before Christmas (Cambodian Version)

    Poetrooper sends us his 2004 poem in honor of John Kerry who reported for duty that year;

    Twas the night before Christmas and we were afloat
    Somewhere in Cambodia in our little boat.
    While the river was lightened by rockets red glare
    No one but the President knew we were there.
    The crew was all nestled deep down in their bunks,
    While the Spook and I watched the sampans and junks.
    Our mission was secret, so secret in fact,
    No one else would remember it when we got back.
    When out on the water there arose such a clatter
    I leaped down from the bridge to see what was the matter.
    The incoming friendly was starting to flash
    And I knew that the ARVN’s were having a bash.
    The snap of friendly fire on the warm tropic air
    Convinced me for sure no one knew we were there,
    On a clandestine mission so secret it’s true
    That I’m still convinced only Tricky Dick knew.
    While I huddled for safety in the tub on the bow,
    I thought of a title, “Apocalypse Now.”
    To give to the films I was I making each day
    To show all the voters when I made my big play.
    As I sat there sweating in my lucky flight jacket,
    Spook said, “Merry Christmas!” and tossed me a packet.
    And what to my wondering eyes did appear,
    But a new lucky cap, which I still have right here.
    I keep it tucked here, in this leather brief case,
    Just sharing with the press its secretive place
    As I regale them again with my senate refrain,
    That Christmas in Cambodia is seared into my brain.
    Don’t bother to quibble with history my friend,
    By pointing out Johnson was President then.
    Don’t listen to Swiftees who try to explain,
    For I tell you that night is seared into my brain.
    Down Hibbard, down Lonsdale, and you too O’Neill,
    So you don’t remember? Well it’s something I feel.
    I don’t need all you Swiftvets to support my campaign,
    Cause Christmas in Cambodia is seared into my brain,
    Into my brain, into my brain, into my brain…

  • Did you know that John Kerry was in the Vietnam war?

    I’d never heard that before, but the Associated Press says he was in their report of Kerry in Vietnam, again;

    As Kerry’s boat eased off a jetty onto the Cai Nuoc River, the secretary of state told his guide: “I’ve been on this river many times.” Asked how he felt about returning to the scene of his wartime military service for the first time, Kerry replied: “Weird and it’s going to get weirder”

    On this tour, Kerry was clad in long, drab olive cargo pants, a blue-and-white plaid long-sleeved shirt and sunglasses instead of the uniform he wore as a Navy officer in 1968 and 1969. In a new role, Kerry was revisiting the Delta’s rivers that made a vivid impression on him as a young lieutenant.

    Kerry, standing next to the captain and surveying the brown water and muddy banks, recalled the smell of burning firewood as his boat passed through small fishing villages.

    At one point, a family in a sampan traveling in the opposite direction smiled and waved. Kerry waved back, and noticing the family had a dog on board, remarked with a smile: “I had a dog, too. Its name was VC.”

    No mention of his trip to Cambodia that President-elect Nixon mandated which was seared, seared in his memory, you, know, a month before Nixon took office. There’s no mention of him chasing any unarmed Vietnamese children into the jungle to gun them down. There’s also no mention that he was returned to duty the same day each time that he reported for medical treatment for his wounds which resulted in the award of three Purple Hearts. I’m surprised that the Associated Press didn’t tell us that he he still carries around the grains of rice in his butt cheeks from the time he blew up a couple of sacks of the grain with an M-79 grenade launcher.

    Yeah, I believe that he had a dog named “VC” because his tour of duty lasted almost three months, so he needed the companionship through that grueling time. There was barely enough time to get all of those films made of him patrolling jungle and getting his command in enough firefights to earn him the 3 Purple Hearts that would get him an early ticket home. The imaginary dog probably wore the imaginary hat that the CIA operative had given him in Cambodia, you know, on the trip that was seared, seared in his memory.

  • Three Pinocchios for Kerry’s latest attack on Bush crew

    The Washington Post‘s Fact Checker gives John Kerry three Pinocchios for his comment on ABC’s “This Week” a few weeks back when Kerry made the claim that the Bush Administration had “blew it” when Iran had made overtures to the US to slow or end the Iranians’ nuclear program back in 2003. Kerry was trying to make it look like the Obama Administration is just cleaning up the mess that the Bush Administration created by inactivity to sell the Obama Administration’s recent agreement with Iran. It turns out that the source of the overture was greatly in doubt. Is still in doubt.

    Whether the missive represented a genuine proposal has long been the subject of debate. Some mid-level State Department officials had wanted to test Iran’s unorthodox approach, but then-Secretary of State Colin Powell never forwarded any proposal to the White House.

    Condoleezza Rice, at the time the national security adviser, told Congress in 2007 she had never seen the fax.

    “We had people who said, ‘The Iranians want to talk to you,’ lots of people who said, ‘The Iranians want to talk to you,’ ” she testified when she was secretary of state and pushing for talks with Iran. “But I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, ‘We’re ready to recognize Israel.’ . . . I just don’t remember ever seeing any such thing.”

    […]

    Richard Armitage, told PBS’s Frontline in 2007 that not much weight was given to the fax because it did not match up with other signals at the time from the Iranian government.

    […]

    [Mohammad Javad Zarif, then Iran’s U.N. ambassador and now Iran’s foreign minister] had had a secret meeting in Geneva with two senior U.S. officials — Ryan Crocker and Zalmay Khalilzad — just the day before the mysterious fax arrived at the State Department. It was the fourth such meeting that year — and came during a period of unusual and frequent discussions between Iranian and U.S. officials.

    So the question arises: If Iran was serious, why would such an important diplomatic undertaking be transmitted in such a haphazard way through the Swiss ambassador when one of the supposed co-authors was already holding senior-level talks with U.S. officials? It’s possible Zarif was skittish about making such a “grand bargain” approach through official channels, but this puzzle has never been adequately answered.

    As it happens, the May 3, 2003, meeting marked the end of those talks with Zarif. The Americans had asked Iran to interrogate al-Qaeda-linked individuals in Iran regarding intelligence about a possible terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. The Iranians failed to do so, and The Washington Post later reported that U.S. officials concluded that the Riyadh attacks, which took place nine days later and killed 35 people, were planned by al-Qaeda in Iran and ordered from there. The Bush administration abruptly terminated the discussions, and then U.S. officials became mired in a contentious debate about policy toward Iran.

    Given that the Post loves them some Kerry, I’d guess that he deserves more than three Pinocchios for this one. But there’s much more at the link that you should read before you just take a couple of cherry-picked paragraphs. They also have the original document that supposedly comes from the Iranians.

  • White House vs. Kerry on Egypt

    The Daily Beast reports a difference of opinion on what US policy towards Egypt should be, and I never thought that I’d form these words, but I have to go with John Kerry on this one;

    The tension between the national security adviser and the secretary of state spilled over into public view in the past week, when Rice laid out her critical appraisal of the Egyptian government, which contradicted Kerry’s assessment that Egypt was “on the path to democracy.” The now public rift has been simmering behind the scenes for months and illustrates the strikingly divergent Egypt policies the White House and the State Department are pursuing.

    The turf battles and internal confusion are hampering the administration’s approach to Egypt, say lawmakers, experts, and officials inside both governments.

    “John Kerry doesn’t agree with Susan Rice on big portions of our Egypt policy, and he made a deliberate and conscious decision not to mention Morsi in his Cairo meetings,” an administration official told The Daily Beast. “Susan Rice wasn’t happy about it.”

    Ya know, I’m not a believer in that whole “Obama is a Muslim” thing that goes around, but when his administration tried to protect the Muslim Brotherhood/Morsi government during the coup, then decided to not supply the new government with military aid after they were adamant about giving the Morsi administration that same aid, and they’re trying to ease sanctions against Iran, though Iran has done nothing to earn that easing and their continued support for Al-Qeada-linked Syrian rebels, well, they’re not doing themselves any favors or dispelling the appearances that they’re creating. Now they’ve made me agree with John Kerry. Jerks.

  • Kerry urges patience with Iran

    After learning the other day that the Obama Administration has unilaterally decided to relax sanctions on Iran, the French-looking Secretary of State, John Kerry went to Congress yesterday to ask Congress to be patient before instituting more sanctions against Iran, according to the Stars & Stripes;

    Kerry reminded reporters that as a senator, he joined his then-colleagues in putting the sanctions against Iran in place. But he urged patience for them to work before Congress meddles and decides to increase them, therefore harming a U.S.-led coalition and the talks themselves.

    “We put them in place in order to be able to put us in the strongest position possible to be able to negotiate. We now are negotiating. And the risk is that if Congress were to unilaterally move to raise sanctions, it could break faith with those negotiations and actually stop them and break them apart,” said Kerry, who was testifying before a closed-door committee hearing.

    How patient are we supposed be? We’ve been puttering around with Iran and their impending nuclear program for more than a decade. These sanctions were supposed to work when we began imposing them during the Bush Administration and Iran hasn’t slowed their march toward nuclear weapons a bit. And, really, can we trust that they’ll abide by any agreement they might reach with Kerry? They’ve been finding ways around sanctions and selling oil on the world market to finance their nuclear weapons development – so why would we believe them now?

  • Kerry says Obama is ready to use force in Iran

    I know, it’s pretty funny, isn’t it? This is from the Washington Times;

    In an NBC interview that took place after talks in Geneva broke down early Sunday, Mr. Kerry said criticism from some that the administration is unwilling to leverage American power in the Iranian talks and in the region is unfounded.

    “The president has been willing and made it clear that he is prepared to use force with respect to Iran’s weapon, and he has deployed the forces and the weapons necessary to achieve that goal if it has to be achieved,” he said. “We can’t let mythology and politics start to cloud reality.”

    It might be believable if the Daily Beat hadn’t reported earlier this week that this Administration has been loosening sanctions against Iran for the past five years;

    A review of Treasury Department notices reveals that the U.S. government has all but stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan Rouhani, in June.

    On Wednesday Obama said in an interview with NBC News the negotiations in Geneva “are not about easing sanctions.” “The negotiations taking place are about how Iran begins to meet its international obligations and provide assurances not just to us but to the entire world,” the president said.

    So, these weakened sanctions have allowed Iran to make illicit profits on the oil they sell on the world market, making the sanctions that were supposed to influence Iran to stop making nuclear weapons ineffectual. I’m sure John Kerry threatening force on behalf of Obama has the mullahs quaking in their sandals.

  • Israel rejects Kerry-Iran deal

    John Kerry stopped by Israel yesterday on his way to Switzerland to negotiate with Iran over their nuclear program, the program that most of the world believes will result in yet another nuclear-armed nation in the unstable Middle East. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says that Israel “utterly rejects” the plan that Kerry will offer Iran, according to the Associated Press;

    “I understand the Iranians are walking around very satisfied in Geneva as well they should because they got everything and paid nothing,” Netanyahu told reporters.

    “They wanted relief of sanctions after years of grueling sanctions, they got that. They paid nothing because they are not reducing in any way their nuclear enrichment capability. So Iran got the deal of the century and the international community got a bad deal,” Netanyahu said.

    “This is a very bad deal and Israel utterly rejects it. Israel is not obliged by this agreement and Israel will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and defend the security of its people,” he said.

    Well, really, what did everyone expect from this administration, especially with Kerry running our diplomacy? I expect that after giving Iran everything it wants, we’ll see a bunch of back-clapping in the White House because they got Iran to show up at negotiations, and that’s all that really counts, isn’t it? The Obama and Bush Administrations have been hoping that Israel will take direct action against Iran to stop their nuclear weapon development and this might the thing that pushes them over the edge.