After serving as the California attorney general and a lobbyist for the firm Venable, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) decided to run again for Congress in 2004, claiming that the War on Terrorism had drawn him back into public service. “If 9/11 had not occurred, I would not be running,” he told reporters at the time.

This year, Lungren became chairman of a key anti-terrorism subcommittee that oversees the nation’s infrastructure and technology security. Tasked with protecting vulnerable chemical manufacturing plants from a terrorist attack, Lungren’s main legislative accomplishment has been the shepherding of the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) through committee. However, many are arguing that the bill is laden with loopholes for the chemical industry. Large-scale chemical companies, like Koch Industries, have lobbied against expensive requirements to use less dangerous chemicals and to let the Department of Homeland Security set certain safety standards. Lungren’s bill, as critics have detailed, extends reckless loopholes for chemical companies while exempting many water treatment plants from post-9/11 safety rules.

As Homeland Security officials have warned for years, an explosion at a chemical plant remains one of the most lethal terrorism risks for the nation. A Center for American Progress report, Chemical Security 101, details the dangers posed by unsecured chemical facilities across the nation. Notably, there is at least one chemical plant within proximity of Lungren’s district:

– The General Chemical Bay Point Works in Pittsburg, California is a chemical manufacturing facility produces high purity electronic grade hydrofluoric acid (concentration 49% to 70%) for use in semiconductor and silicon manufacturing industries. An explosion or attack at this plant would endanger the lives of up to 3 million people in the Sacramento and Bay Area.

Lungren led House Homeland Security Committee Republicans in voting to kill amendments that would have closed security loopholes and required safer chemicals at the General Chemical Bay Point plant near his district.

Though he promised to return to Congress to keep the country safe from terrorism, Lungren’s primary accomplishment is a giveaway to chemical companies more interested in short-term profit than protecting the lives of Americans.

Texas Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry finally laid out his foreign policy platform and, in doing so, attempted to set himself apart from both the neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush and the progressive realism (and corresponding embrace of multilateral institutions) employed by the Barack Obama administration.

Perry rejected the aggressive unilateralism of the Bush foreign policy, saying:

I do not believe that America should fall subject to a foreign policy of military adventurism. We should only risk shedding American blood and spending American treasure when our vital interests are threatened and we should always look to build coalitions among the nations to protect the mutual interests of freedom loving people.

But he shied away from the mulilateral coalition building proven effective by Obama in toppling Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya and gaining U.N. Security Council support for Iran sanctions. Perry said, “We cannot concede the moral authority of our nation to multi-lateral debating societies.”

Perry is eager to distance himself from Bush’s foreign policy doctrine, which left the U.S. overextended in two wars. And he needs to steer his campaign clear of endorsing Obama’s foreign policy since a large swath of the GOP criticized the White House’s Libya strategy and predicted Obama’s “leading from behind” would lead to defeat for Libyan rebels.

But distancing himself from the Bush administration or the “military adventurism” exhibited in the invasion of Iraq might be difficult with Douglas Feith — a Bush administration official well known for leading the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans which was reponsible for cooking up faulty intel on Iraq’s WMD program — and Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld serving to advise Perry on foreign policy.

Indeed, advice from Feith might have been what led Perry to already contradict his position against military adventurism when asked about about preemptive military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. He said there are “a lot of different ways to deal with Iran,” and added:

I’m never going to take off the table our ability to have a military solution to a country like Iran.

Perry, much like George W. Bush in 2000, appears to be making campaign promises of a modest foreign policy and cautious use of military force all while surrounding himself with foreign policy hawks who will do all they can to keep the U.S. on a war footing.

In an interview with Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he never pledged to help now-deposed Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Qaddafi get military equipment. A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks recalled a 2009 meeting McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) held with Qaddafi’s son and national security adviser Muatassim. “McCain assured Muatassim that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs,” the cable said, adding that McCain “pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress.” At another point in the meeting, according to the cable, Graham and McCain both restated the pledge to help.

Speaking with Rogin, however, McCain had a different recollection of the exchange:

“[Qaddafi] asked me, ‘Well, we’d like to get our C-130 upgrades.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s what you want,’ but I was noncommittal,” McCain said. “I said, ‘I understand that’s your need,’ but I never said anything and I never did a single thing to follow up.”

McCain blamed the U.S. embassy in Libya, which never cleared the account with the Congressional delegation, for the mix-up: “At that time, the embassy was very interested in having a relationship with Qaddafi, but I can’t imagine why that diplomat said the things they said. It’s beyond me.” The author of the memo was the top U.S. diplomatic official in Libya, Joan Polaschik. McCain called the charge made in the cable “outrageous” and said helping Qaddafi to get military equipment “would have been ridiculous.”

Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) told ThinkProgress he was paid $25,000 to speak at a rally to remove a controversial Iranian exiled opposition group from the U.S. terrorist rolls after previously not saying if he was paid.

Kennedy wouldn’t tell Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin whether or not he was paid to speak at the rally to remove the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department list of foreign terror organizations. But asked by ThinkProgress, Kennedy replied that he had been paid $25,000 and that he wouldn’t accept the money if he didn’t believe in the cause:

THINKPROGRESS: Were you paid for this appearance or the other one?

KENNEDY: Yes, I have.

THINKPROGRESS: Do you mind if I ask how much it was?

KENNEDY: Y’know, $25,000.

THINKPROGRESS: By whom?

KENNEDY: By the Iranian-American diaspora. [...] I have no problem with it. I wouldn’t support a group just because I was paid for it if I didn’t believe in them. And the implication of some of these questions is, “Well, if you’re getting paid you must be getting paid for something you don’t agree with.” [...]

The real thing is that the money is being funneled out of Tehran to oppress this group. So let’s be balanced when people start talking about follow the money.

Watch the video:

The MEK has been on the U.S. list of terror groups since 1997, which prevents members from traveling to or raising funds in the U.S. The group, whose leadership is based in Paris while about 3,400 members live in a camp in Iraq, renounced violence in 2001 and was forcibly disarmed by the U.S. in 2003. Critics allege that the group’s renunciation of violence may not be genuine, de-listing them could hurt Iran’s indigenous Green opposition movement, and that the group has no backing inside Iran as a democratic opposition group.

The camp in Iraq, called Ashraf, was under U.S. control until 2009 when the U.S. handed over security control to the Iraqis as part of a larger deal. Since then, residents of Ashraf have accused Iraqi forces of abuses including attacks that reportedly killed dozens of members of the group.

Speaking before a large crowd outside the State Department that included attendees bused-in from afar on all-expenses-paid trips, Kennedy cited one such attack — in April, which reportedly killed 34 Ashraf residents — as having spurred his support for the group.

The campaign to de-list the MEK has drawn attention because of the millions of dollars spent on the effort.

Kennedy joins other former U.S. officials, mostly from conservative circles but including some liberals, such as former-Vermont governor and DNC chairman Howard Dean.

To cheers from the crowd, Kennedy — invoking the memory of his father, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy — compared the MEK’s Paris-based leader Maryam Rajavi to South Africa’s first post-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, who led a spate of guerrilla sabotage bombings against the Apartheid regime before going to prison and eventually leading the country’s transition. (Mandela admits his guerilla past and his group’s human rights abuses. Rajavi’s MEK often denies having committed any acts of terror over it’s 45 year history and disputes allegations made by Human Rights Watch about abuses against the group’s own members.)

Kennedy told ThinkProgress his work to de-list the MEK and support for them as a democratic Iranian opposition was in line with his long-standing support of human rights worldwide.