john kerry

History just has a way of kicking Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the teeth. There the 2004 Democratic nominee was, in Kabul, two weeks ago, securing President Hamid Karzai’s acquiescence to a runoff election, a very big diplomatic feat. Now challenger Abdullah Abdullah has withdrawn; the runoff is off; Karzai has been declared the winner [...]

The Iowa Independent reports that earlier this week, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.), the co-sponsors of a sweeping climate bill that Boxer hopes to mark up in committee next week. In the letter, Grassley trots out a lot of the usual GOP talking points [...]

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) vouched for Ahmed Wali Karzai in a speech on Monday, saying he was never shown any evidence that the brother of the Afghan president is a druglord when he asked the intelligence community to produce it. But the report that Karzai is in fact on the CIA payroll has caused Kerry [...]

Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been accused of dealing drugs. Charges, and accusations, have never quite stuck. Nor has American pressure ever been brought to bear in earnest. The New York Times, in an explosive story, provides something of an explanation:

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently back from brokering Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s acquiescence to a runoff election, is giving a stemwinder address to the Council on Foreign Relations right now about future strategy in Afghanistan. It’s a forceful defense of the war, and he urges conditionalizing military strategy on the U.S. [...]

During the course of the heath reform debate raging on Capitol Hill, some supporters of the public option have conceded that the very nomenclature adopted to describe the public plan — why not just say socialized medicine? — has threatened the push to create such an option to compete with private insurers.
“We’re talking about [...]

That was quite an image, seeing Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai announce that he’ll accept a runoff election. Well, not just that, but seeing him flanked by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who stopped in Kabul during a trip to Pakistan to discuss his reviled aid bill. Kerry, it’s [...]

Ok, so this will probably still mean a prolonged period of indecision as regards a U.S. troop increase, but The New York Times has a great and very detailed piece indicating that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is backing away from his refusal to accept a runoff in the stolen election.

Apparently Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) remarks to CNN about waiting until the Afghan election is sorted out before committing more U.S. troops was Obama administration liturgy. The New York Times pieces together White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s Sunday-show comments and concludes the administration will wait on the outcome of the election before making [...]

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is in Kabul today and will travel on to Pakistan to discuss his hugely-and-needlessly-controversial $7.5 billion civilian-aid package. But before he left he filmed a CNN interview, set to air tomorrow, according to The Associated Press, in which he expressed opposition to another troop increase for Afghanistan:
In [...]