Although US media stopped short of suggesting that the former US president did so because he's an inveterate commie Muslim at heart, that sentiment was certainly in the air as the New York Post thundered about the "deafening media silence" following the 'revelation' and Bloomberg bellowed about Obama peddling in "alternative facts". If nothing else, the episode represented a brief but jarring turnaround in media fortunes for the globalists' favorite liberal.
As with everything else emerging from Washington DC, however, the 'revelation' amounted to a load of bunk. The 'bombshell' Politico report on December 20th, supposedly 'the secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook', 'revealed' how an 8-year-long DEA investigation from 2008-2016:
"used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map illicit networks, [...] followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa."Alas, they never did find out who or what was running this racket because the second Obama administration progressively killed the investigation. Anonymous sources told Politico's Josh Meyer that "they believed" Hezbollah was at the center of this web, then speculated that Obama nixed the investigation as a quid pro quo to secure 'the Iran deal' - which is, of course, itself another charade of epic proportions.
Remember that the 'Iran deal', which Trump berates so much, is the US agreeing to ease crippling, US-imposed sanctions so that Iran can industrialize and develop its economy and get out of the artificial recessionary strait-jacket the US put it in, in exchange for Iran agreeing to not make nuclear weapons.
Trump rar-rars about how this is 'bad for America' without ever explaining why. The reason he doesn't explain is because the deal is not bad for America, it's bad for Israel. And it's not bad for Israel because it might result in it being 'wiped off the map', but because it eventually leads to the underlying natural order imposing itself on the Middle East, the order in which Iran is powerful and the tinpot nexus of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Monarchies - with the help of America's bloated military reach - no longer rules the roost over there.
No one should doubt that drug-money-for-weapons goes through Lebanon. Project Cassandra - as this 'top-secret investigation' was called - undoubtedly sketched great global crime rackets, some or all of which may brush up against, and perhaps even wash through, Hezbollah. But holding that as a 'card' to play against the Iranians is no solid hand; it's a bluff, one the Iranians called.
Even the name of this 'stealthy operation' gives it away: Cassandra, the mythological figure "cursed to speak true prophecies that no one believed," as in, Israel-the-only-Democracy-in-the-Middle-East, as in 'Iran-is-evil-but-no-one-will-believe-us'.
Americans may eat this stuff up, but everyone else knows that investigating Hezbollah for running a global coke racket is like investigating the Orthodox Church for running a child prostitution ring. Sure, there are gonna be one or two bad apples in there, but the Patriarch isn't some crime boss overseeing the abduction of children on an industrial scale.
The insinuation (because that's all it is) that Hezbollah is a narco-pimp is obviously one that Israel - via its powerful lobby - wants to sell to Washington and anywhere else wiling to buy it. Israel doesn't hate Hezbollah because it threatens to outsell it on the illicit drugs markets; Israel hates Hezbollah because it is a spectacularly successful grassroots self-defence organization that kicked Israel's ass when it invaded Lebanon in 2006, and is stronger than ever as it goes toe-to-toe against the head-chopper mercenaries Israel has bedded down with across the region.
No, the plausible reason an Obama government would derail a DEA investigation is that the money inevitably connects to Wall Street and other Western dens of scum and villainy. So the political hatchet-job isn't that Obama protected Hezbollah; it's that Obama protected the usual suspects under the faux political rationale that he wanted to barter with the Iranians. And if he did tell the Iranians that he would 'look the other way' with respect to "all that yayo", I would like to imagine that they replied, in diplomatic fashion of course: "What are you talking about, you arse of a man?"
This 'Obama-coke bomb' - like the actual coke pouring into the country - has been dropped into the mix for domestic US consumption. Coming as this report did after Trump played the Jerusalem card in early December, the beleaguered US president has banked powerful Jewish support to get the media off his back and the Russiagate witch-hunt wound down.
Attorney General Sessions immediately signalled that he would investigate Obama's 'perfidy', which is titillating, but don't expect that to actually go anywhere. The 'revelation' has taken Obama's liberal deity status down a notch or two, but the most concrete result so far has been this week's unanimous call for regime change in Iran. Does that mean this was a 'two-for-one' operation by the Israelis, a 'we-scratch-your-back, you-scratch-ours' deal? The timing seems rather coincidental.
The protests in Iran may or may not have been spontaneous - and they may or may not develop into anything regime-shattering - but the salient thing to note at this point is the bipartisan - dare I say harmonious - chorus of flatulence wafting out from Washington as all sides bay for Mullah blood. Say what you want about the Israel lobby and its obsession with attacking Iran, but it may be the only thing holding together the otherwise crippled US polity.
Reader Comments
If Obama had wanted to keep Hezbollah sweet they had 50 better ways to do it. If they needed to keep Iran sweet they had 50 better ways to do that did not involve Hezbollah. This Harsbara propaganda.