2 January 2018

Note from Norm: Russia or Iran, Trump or Obama, let’s get the truth

Like many Americans I find the efforts of the Russian government, and its President, Vladimir Putin, to meddle in our elections to be both discomfiting and a direct assault on democracy.

It behooves all Americans, regardless of party affiliation or ideology, to demand that our nation’s leaders get to the bottom of what the Russians did, and did not, do to insert themselves into our electoral process and systems.

Unfortunately, for far too many in the national media, and the liberal Democrats it supports, the agenda isn’t to get to the bottom of this chaotic and complex mess but to make this attach on our freedom solely about President Donald Trump.

If one needed any evidence of this obvious “gotcha” obsession with the Trump Administration and Russia they need to look no further than the obvious “look-the-other-way” obsession with the Obama Administration and Iran.

Case in point is an explosive revelation that the Obama Administration affirmatively, and directly, undermined the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) effort to topple Hezbollah and its $1 billion money laundering ring that smuggle cocaine into the United States.

Part One of the expose, “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook” was published in Politico in a story written by Josh Meyer.

The lead paragraph sets the stage for an indictment of the Obama Administration so damning that it makes the Iran-Contra Scandal pale by comparison.

“In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States…”

As described by Politico, the DEA campaign, called “Project Cassandra” was “… launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.”

To read the full report go to this link:  https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/

Hezbollah, for the uninitiated, is one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world.

A terrorist organization that has received the full backing and financial support of Iran.

Despite the publication of this report there has been nary a mention of the story by the national news media.

As David Harsanyi write in an OpEd in the New Yorker in a piece titled, “A deafening media silence on the Obama-Hezbollah scandal” writes: “Days after the news broke, in fact, neither NBC News, ABC News nor CBS News — whose shows can boast a collective 20 million viewers — had been able to find the time to relay the story to its sizeable audiences. Other than Fox News, cable news largely ignored the revelations as well.”

Now, before my liberal friends accuse me of schilling for right-wing news outlets let me state what many of those on the right believe to be true.

Politico is far more left in its reporting and coverage of events in D.C. than it is centrist.

Furthermore, the writer of the Politico piece, Josh Meyer, has been seen and published in the following news platforms: POLITICO, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, Reuters, The Atlantic, MSN, NBC News, CNBC and 12 more, Quartz, WPXI-TV (Pittsburgh, PA), Vice, Roanoke Times, KWWL-TV (Waterloo, IA), Defense One, The Franklin News-Post, Recode, KGW-TV (Portland, OR), RealClearPolitics, Family Security Matters, POLITICO Europe

In other words, he is not a fly-by-night guy living in his parent’s basement writing blog posts trying to manufacture conspiracy theories.

Yet, the fact that the Obama Administration killed an effort to stop a terrorist organization from smuggling cocaine into our country – into our communities – injuring and killing Americans – to raise money to support its terrorist activities has barely receive a blip in the news media.

Worse yet, while Iran continues to foment terror and disruption throughout the Middle East, and the rest of the world, using its backing of Hezbollah as cover for its evil, the Obama Administration continues to justify a nuclear agreement with Iran that will put the nation in the same sordid club as Kim Jong-un and North Korea sooner rather than later.

And, the national press allows this assault on democracy, freedom, liberty and global peace, security and stability to go unchecked.

The nation’s media and press corps wring their hands every time the President, and his supporters, accuse them of reporting “fake news.”

While I find these accusations unhelpful, and far too often not accurate or fair, in a nation where a robust media is fundamental to protecting and preserving our freedom and liberty I can also understand why many might feel justified in lobbing these charges.

There is no doubt in my mind that Russia has meddled in America’s elections.  It is the obligation of all of us to demand a full accounting of how and why this happened and what must be done to stop the Russians, or any nation, from violating our democratic processes and systems.

There is also no doubt in my mind that Iran, and the terrorist group that is simply an extension of the tyrants that run the country, continue to seek to destroy our democratic processes and systems, as well as our freedom and liberty and those of our allies, particularly Israel.

Whether it is Russia or Iran, Trump or Obama, the truth must win out.

Our political leaders, and our nation’s media, have an obligation to our democracy to put aside their bias and their ideology and get to the truth.

Our nation’s very safety and security depends on it.