Kerry didn't raise issue of Americans imprisoned in Iran in deal giving Iranians $5 Billion in cash??

As you all surely know, Team Obama just negotiated one of the worst deals of all time with Iran.  The House Foreign Affairs Committee found the deal...curious in the extreme, and asked Obama's hand-picked secretary of state John Kerry to drop by and answer some questions about it, as part of their responsibility to oversee the operation of our government.

Republican Rep. Chris Smith asked Kerry if, during negotiations that would end up giving a huge benefit to Iran, he'd raised the issue of the fate of two Americans being held captive by Iran.

Kerry replied,

We have not linked [the issue of the captive Americans] directly to the nuclear issue because we believe that prejudices them [apparently the Iranians??], and also prejudices the negotiations [sic]— we don’t want them to become the hostages or pawns of a process that then gets played against something they [Iranians?] want with respect to the nuclear program.

Wait...what??  You don't want the American captives to become "hostages or pawns"?  Dude, the Iranians were trying to get $5 Billion in cash released to them, and to get the West to lift economic sanction.  They really, reeally wanted this.  In exchange for this huge benefit they offered to do what they've been doing all along--enrich uranium.  But the reason the sanctions had been imposed in the first place was to get Iran to *stop* doing that.

Your "deal" 1) released their cash; 2) lifted the sanctions and 3) explicitly allows them to keep enriching uranium.  You gave away everything and got *nothing* of substance in return.

Because the *Iranians* wanted this deal so much, you could easily have made one of our demands that they release the two or three Americans they're holding.  And yet you say shit like "We don't want them to *become* hostages..."  Dude, here's a flash for ya:  They already *are* hostages.


John Kerry strikes me as a dangerous moron-- dangerous because he *looks* polished and speaks in a pleasant voice, which leads people to believe he's smart.  But as his quote above shows, he's just another dumb con-man.  Can't imagine how he could get hand-picked to be secretary of state.  Wait...

A bit of background for my student readers:  In 2004 Kerry ran for president.  He ran as a military veteran who'd served in VietNam, which was a huge contrast to the usual military-hating Democrats, and many thought he had a good chance of winning.  But on closer inspection it turned out he'd only been in Nam for 3 months or so, and had been given an early return to the States because he'd allegedly been wounded in combat 3 times.

Closer investigation turned up testimony that all three of his "wounds" were scratches.  Republicans asked him to clear this up by asking the military to release his records.  Kerry was indignant:  How dare anyone question his statements!  But rather than release the records, he refused.  But he *solemnly promised* that after the election was over, he'd do so.

Virtually no one believed he would--and in case you're hopelessly naive I'll end the mystery:  he never did.

Then after his return to the U.S. he wrote that he threw his military medals over the White House fence as a protest.  Confronted with that statement during the campaign, and seeing that he was about to lose the vote of everyone who'd served or had a relative who had, Kerry changed his story:  He said he'd thrown medals over the fence all right, but they weren't *his* medals.

Hey, that changes everything, dude.  Cuz for a second there we were startin' to think you weren't quite as gung-ho as your current campaign rhetoric was saying.

Why anyone would believe anything Kerry says today is a mystery in itself.  The guy's a slick con.