Iran can buy a lot of terror with $100 billion

Jeff Jacoby, bostonglobe.com

Kerry image from

 Extract:

AS A CANDIDATE for president in 2004, John Kerry couldn’t bring himself to worry overmuch about Islamic terrorism. Today, as a secretary of state trying to sell a nuclear accord that would lift economic sanctions from the world’s leading state sponsor of Islamic terrorism, he still can’t.

During his run for the White House, Kerry insisted the danger from global jihadists should be viewed as primarily an “intelligence gathering, law enforcement, public diplomacy effort,” not a military conflict. “We have to get back to the place we were,” he told an interviewer — back to regarding suicide bombings and planes flying into skyscrapers as a manageable annoyance, not an existential threat. He likened terror attacks to prostitution and illegal gambling: “a nuisance” that “we’re never going to end . . . but we’re going to reduce.”