The man who wanted (and still wants) to be president is calling for “insurance” for CIA agents against the “recklessness” of the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics. In today’s Wall Street Journal, he writes:

Your Sept. 12 editorial “Jack Bauer Insurance” was a disservice not to me or to fictional characters like Jack Bauer, but to the very real CIA agents whose commitment to the truth didn’t fit the administration’s neoconservative agenda on Iraq, and to agents endangered by reckless administration policies.

It’s been reported that CIA officers refused to be trained in the administration’s controversial interrogation techniques, and in at least one instance these techniques yielded questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators. The Supreme Court, not Democrats, ruled administration detainee policies out of bounds, and it was the outrage of Republican senators that forced the administration to apply the Geneva Convention to enemy prisoners in order to best protect captured Americans.

Iraq has been an endless abuse of the CIA. CIA operative Tyler Drumheller said top White House officials simply brushed off the warning that “reliable intelligence” suggested Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, saying they were “no longer interested” in intelligence. Former CIA operative Paul Pillar wrote that “intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made.”

Former CIA case officer Jim Marcinkowski argued the Valerie Plame leak hurt “the credibility of our case officers when they try to convince an overseas contact that their safety is of primary importance.” Former CIA agent Larry Johnson, a registered Republican, said it “speaks volumes” that President Bush held no one accountable for the leak of an agent’s identity. Forgotten is President George H.W. Bush’s admonition that those who expose our agents are “the most insidious of traitors.” CIA officers don’t need Jack Bauer insurance–they need insurance against the recklessness of this administration.

Where to start? The Plame ‘leak’ - has Sen. Kerry been hiding under a rock the last few months? For starters, former Dep. Sec. of State Richard Armitage has admitted to being the ‘leaker’ in the case of la Plame, which destroys the whole idea that Bush-hating Dems have been pushing for years that the ‘leak’ was done by a staunch proponent of the Iraq war (Karl Rove who, it was announced earlier this year would not be indicted) in an effort to deliberately ‘out’ a ‘covert’ agent in order to try and ‘punish’ her lying husband. So Kerry’s call for someone in the admin to be ‘held accountable’ smacks of complete and deliberate ignorance. The crime of ‘deliberately outing a covert agent’ was not committed by anyone in the admin, and if it had been, Fitz would have handed out indictments on the charges by now.

Secondly, he quotes “registered Republican” Larry Johnson, as if noting that he was (probably not now, but at one time) was a “registered Republican” is supposed to lend more credibilty to the charge that the President’s lack of “admonition” of the person(s) who committed no crime “speaks volumes.” Quoting Johnson was a bad move on his part, because, as I’ve noted here, Larry Johnson has become a hero to the get-Rove Bush-haters on the left who trumped up this non-scandal in the hopes that the man (Rove) they hate even more than Bush would have to do the perp walk. Johnson is a partisan hack who delivered the Democratic radio address back in July 2005. He’s also the same guy who said back in June that it was “small wonder” Karl Rove’s mom killed herself, adding, “Once she discovered what a despicable soul she had spawned she apparently saw no other way out.” He’s also now infamous in conservative circles for demonstrating what a real live jerk looks like when he attacked a fellow blogger on numerous fronts, one of them by asking the blogger if his support for the President was due to a “latent homosexual man crush”.

This is the kind of man that Kerry tries holds up as an example of credible Republican opposition to the President. But the guy has no crediblity, and has clearly displayed his far left Democrat credentials with his blatantly hateful rhetoric towards the President and his administration.

The fact that Kerry would reference such a repugnant slug makes calls the rest of what he wrote into question. If he doesn’t know about Johnson’s reprehensible background and comments, someone on his staff is not doing their job.

And speaking of Kerry, the Examiner has a write-up on the Senator that I found somewhat humorous, especially this part:

Asked if he dreads the prospect of being “Swift-Boated” all over again, Kerry counters that he would relish such a fight.

“I’m prepared to kick their ass from one end of America to the other,” he declares. “I am so confident of my abilities to address that and to demolish it and to even turn it into a positive.”

Which garnered a chuckle from John O’Neill:

Kerry’s tough talk triggers laughter from John O’Neill, a fellow Vietnam veteran who helped found Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth and wrote a blistering 2004 book on Kerry, “Unfit for Command.”

“Well, he’s got eight times as much time to prepare for us as he spent in Vietnam,” says O’Neill, referring to Kerry’s short tour of duty.

The article is mainly about Kerry addressing his mistakes from the 2004 election, and how he’s trying to learn from them as he explores a possible bid for 2008. If he keeps banging the “2004 election was stolen!!!” drum, he’ll win a lot more fans that he has now.

This has been your John Kerry update for the week ending 9/16/06.

Prior:

• Kerry echoes Dean talking point on Israel/Lebanon conflict: This wouldn’t have happened had he been president
• Kerry smacked down in Senate vote on plan to withdraw troops from Iraq
• Kerry complicates things for Dems
• And this man could have been president
• Kerry “thinking hard” about another run for prez
• The Defeatocrats
• John “F” Kerry
• The Kerry Tone