Integrity, Integrity, Integrity.
Thank Goodness when John Kerry is President we can rely on his honesty, veracity and integrity. At least that's what he tells us. Er, except, there's these foreign diplomats, ususally thought to be Kerry-philes, who are sorry to say that, no, they did not meet with John Kerry in 2002 before the vote on Resolution 1441 re: Irag, as he says they did. Story by Joel Mowbray of Wash Times here.
When reached for comment last week, an official with the Kerry campaign stood by the candidate's previous claims that he had met with the entire Security Council.
But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion."
A Kerry aide refused to identify who participated in the meeting.
The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council."
Asked whether the international body had any records of Mr. Kerry sitting down with the whole council, a U.N. spokesman said that "our office does not have any record of this meeting."
A U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the Security Council's actions in fall of 2002 said that he was not aware of any meeting Mr. Kerry had with members of the panel.
An official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations remarked: "We were as surprised as anyone when Kerry started talking about a meeting with the Security Council."
Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters.
He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met.
One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council.
The revelation that Mr. Kerry never met with the entire U.N. Security Council could be problematic for the Massachusetts senator, as it clashes with one of his central foreign-policy campaign themes — honesty.
At a New Mexico rally last month, Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush will "do anything he can to cover up the truth." At what campaign aides billed as a major foreign-policy address, Mr. Kerry said at New York University last month that "the first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people."
In recent months, Mr. Kerry has faced numerous charges of dishonesty from Vietnam veterans over his war record, and his campaign has backtracked before from previous statements about Mr. Kerry's foreign diplomacy.
For example, in March, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Florida that he'd met with foreign leaders who privately endorsed him.
"I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' "
But the senator refused to document his claim and a review by The Times showed that Mr. Kerry had made no official foreign trips since the start of 2002, according to Senate records and his own published schedules. An extensive review of Mr. Kerry's domestic travel schedule revealed only one opportunity for him to have met foreign leaders here.
After a week of bad press, Kerry foreign-policy adviser Rand Beers said the candidate "does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements."
The Democrat has also made his own veracity a centerpiece of his campaign, calling truthfulness "the fundamental test of leadership."
Mr. Kerry closed the final debate by recounting what his mother told him from her hospital bed, "Remember: integrity, integrity, integrity."
In an interview published in the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Kerry was asked what he would want people to remember about his presidency. He responded, "That it always told the truth to the American people."

