"a man for all seasons"
Here we go!
The Democratic nominee has a long record of fearlessly exposing
abuses of power -- including launching the investigation that
unraveled the worst scandal since Watergate.- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal
July 22, 2004 | John Kerry's political education is far deeper than that of senators who have merely legislated. He has journeyed to the heart of darkness any number of times and emerged to tell the tale. It is not simply that the commander of the Swift Boats unit with which Kerry served in Vietnam was the model of the bloodthirsty, bombastic colonel in "Apocalypse Now." Kerry's combat experience hardly ended in the Mekong, but moved into the dangerous realm of high politics.
From his first appearance on the public stage, giving voice as a decorated officer to the antiwar disillusionment of Vietnam veterans, when President Nixon and his dirty-tricks crew targeted him, Kerry has uncovered cancers on the presidency, and this is especially why the Bush administration fears him. He has explored the dark recesses of contemporary history, often without political reward or even acknowledgment. Tarred as a "flip-flopper" by Bush's $85 million TV ad campaign, Kerry in fact is one of the most consistent political leaders of his generation. The truth is a vivid and unbroken line, but only sketchily known.
In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, Kerry discovered the thread that would unravel the Iran-Contra scandal -- the creation of an illegal, clandestine foreign policy apparatus run out of the National Security Council by President Reagan's military aide, Oliver North, and directed ultimately by CIA director William Casey. Kerry had the training and instincts of a prosecutor and was informed by his Vietnam experience. As the first district attorney of Middlesex County (Boston) in Massachusetts, he had smashed the local Mafia. "A central part of my campaign had been the notion that I would bring to the Senate the experience of the Vietnam period, which cautioned me against the kind of illegal activities we were hearing about, and the things that were going on," Kerry explained later. "Literally, I did do an ad hoc investigation."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/07/22/kerry/index.html..Kerry proving he's no shrinking violet when it comes to uncovering corruption..Could be Bush's worst nightmare..