Kerry "foreign policy"
dgci found a
very interesting link regarding John Kerry's thoughts on foreign policy as manifested by Susan Rice.
bq.
The Rice Stuff?
Susan Rice talks about Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Does she know what's going on in Iraq?
bq. In a conference call with reporters Monday, Susan Rice, was asked about Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Rice is a senior foreign policy adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign who is often mentioned as a possible National Security Adviser in a Kerry White House. Her comments on Zarqawi make that a worrisome prospect.
bq. Why? Rice's understanding of Zarqawi is wrong. Her comments directly contradict the findings of the review of prewar Iraq intelligence prepared by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and signed by Senator John Edwards, a member of that panel.
bq. Here's what Rice said Monday in response to a question about the Kerry campaign's "position on Zarqawi":
bq.
Our position is that he poses a major threat now in Iraq, a threat that frankly wasn't there before the U.S. invasion. But now we have got to go after him and capture him or kill him. Before the invasion, he was in non-Saddam controlled area, very minor, and didn't pose any imminent threat to the U.S., and was not in any way cooperating with al-Qaeda.
bq. She's right about two things: (1) that Zarqawi "poses a major threat now in Iraq;" and (2) "we have got to go after him and capture or kill him."
bq. Everything else is wrong.
Here are two of the areas where she was wrong:
bq. Start with her claim that Zarqawi is "a threat that frankly wasn't there before the U.S. invasion." The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee review cites a CIA report, Iraq Support for Terrorism: "A variety of reporting indicates that senior al Qaeda terrorist planner al Zarqawi was in Baghdad [redacted]. A foreign government service asserted that the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] knew where al Zarqawi was located despite Baghdad's claims that it could not find him." (p. 337)
bq. Rice also claims that Zarqawi was in a "non-Saddam controlled area, very minor." Language from the Senate report (p. 338) suggests that while Zarqawi certainly operated out of non-Saddam controlled Iraq, he was also in Baghdad:
The article then goes on for a couple more good points and closes with this question:
bq. The question remains then: Why would Susan Rice say these things? Is it possible that the senior foreign policy adviser to John Kerry simply doesn't know much about Zarqawi, the leading terrorist in Iraq today? Or is it possible that she knows all of this and chooses to deny it in a crass political effort to separate the Iraq war from the broader war on terror?
bq. It's hard to know.
bq. And there are more unanswered questions. Does John Edwards agree with Rice or with the Senate report he signed? And what about John Kerry? Was his senior foreign policy adviser speaking for him? Does he believe that Zarqawi was not in Iraq before the war? Or that he was not cooperating "in any way" with al Qaeda?
13 days to go...
Posted by DaveH at October 20, 2004 4:57 PM