Something curious happened last week, on Thursday.
Asked by a reporter if the U.S. wouldn’t have paid the money until the prisoners were released, State Department spokesman John Kirby replied, “That’s correct.”
Hmm. From Merriam-Webster
ransom: a consideration paid or demanded for the release of someone or something from captivity
Seems pretty clear to me that the US State Department has now contradicted the POTUS’s (and its own) prior public statements regarding the Iran payment. Above, State now plainly admits that the USA paid ransom to Iran for the return of some of our citizens. Previously, the “party line” was that the timing was “a coincidence”.
“Coincidence?” Yeah, right. The payment was ransom, plain and simple. Anyone with half a functional brain could see that.
The media’s reaction to this admission has also been interesting. While in a rare display of responsible journalism the New York Times apparently gave this story the Page 1 treatment it deserves, some pernicious “Progressive” propaganda purveyors mainstream media outlets did not. The Washington Post and USA Today each chose to bury the story deep inside their respective Friday editions.
But the fact that at least some of the media would try to bury this isn’t surprising, either. Most of the US media has been de facto cheerleaders for the political left for virtually my entire life.
The only surprising parts of this disgusting incident are that this “most transparent administration in history” actually admitted the sordid truth here – and that at least some of the media didn’t try to hide that fact.
She lied to us!?!?! – Grand Moff Tarkin, Star Wars – Episode IV.
Oh, the astonishment! The back pedaling! The ‘what was I thinking!’, which may or may not be going on now. The GAS/GAF attitude oozes out of Foggy Bottom like the lower level miasma of some plague-infested swamp gas.
Geezo Pete, Hondo, what you were expecting from those overdressed vagrants? Did you ever wonder if it would ever be anything but a tell-all held back until long AFTER bodaprez had gone to grass?
How could you expect honesty out of that bunch of rag pickers and scavengers? How?
You left out that the spokesman is a f’ing retired Rear Admiral. He also did this on the email stuff. As I ranted on the WOT, how can he look at himself in the mirror? A flag officer should have some honor.
Some people sell their soul for 30 pieces of silver, sj. Others, for a PR-flack job – and maybe a higher position in the future.
And I’m with you. I’d have trouble sleeping at night if my job required me to lie, shamelessly, to the American public on a daily basis. I’d probably quit posthaste – or never take such a job in the first place.
Wasn’t this a regularly scheduled payment? It’s not like we just gave Iran oodles of money to get our prisoners released, correct? Meaning we held back on a legal obligation until they met a series of conditions set by us, no? If I’m right about this, then if we had to deliver money to Iran anyway, I don’t think it’s necessarily a ransom to make sure we get some perks out of it.
If I’m wrong, and we owed them no money, and we groveled to them for a few prisoners, thus incentivizing more Iranian state terrorism, then that is a random payment and that is disgusting.
Now, if you want to talk about the fact that we’re making deals that involve us giving millions of dollars to the sponsors of Hezbollah in the first place, then we can talk about that, because that is disgusting.
The payment was contingent on the return of US citizens by Iran. Had they not released our citizens, the DoS admits that the payment would not have occurred. That combination, by definition, makes it a ransom. Read the definition I provided.
Further, normal payments between nations don’t involve cargo planes filled with 3rd-country cash obtained “out of sight” in Europe – to the tune of $400M. Ransoms are almost exclusively cash payments.
The POTUS and DoS initially claimed that the timing here was “coincidental”. That was so transparently bullsh!t that even the NYT – who never met a
CommunistProgressive regime it didn’t like – balked at covering it up.This was ransom, plain and simple. If the US citizens were still in Iran, the cash would still be in Europe and we’d still be negotiating with Iran regarding return of seized assets – that we frankly had no obligation to return prior to our clueless leadership making that “wonderful” nuclear deal with Iran.
Ok, so this was not legally obligated, previously arranged payment. This was indeed a ransom.
Disgusting. Infuriating.
Thanks for clearing it up, Hondo.
B. Hussein 0bama & Company have got to be THE filthiest, most incompetent, and most corrupt administration in US History
So far. Just wait till the dumbest amongst us put that POS Clintoon in office just because she has a vajayjay. I have the feeling that we haven’t seen anything yet.
I don’t know why Iran needs that money from USA. The Russians are using an airbase in Iran to bomb Syria, so obviously, Russia is paying the Iranian government for that usage.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-russia-iran-idUSKCN10R0PA
This should make you gag, too, so put down the coffee now.
http://www.goerie.com/opinion/20160821/russia-iran-demonstrate-price-of-us-powerlessness-charles-krauthammer
Here’s the text, views are limited.
Russia, Iran demonstrate the price of U.S. powerlessness: Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON — Last week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran’s intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now.
The reordering of the Middle East is proceeding apace. Where for 40 years the U.S.-Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia-Iran condominium is now dictating events. That’s what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That’s what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq and utter U.S. immobility on Syria. Consider:
-Iran
The nuclear deal was supposed to begin a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. Instead, it has solidified a strategic-military alliance between Moscow and Tehran. With the lifting of sanctions and the normalizing of Iran’s international relations, Russia rushed in with major deals, including the shipment of S-300 ground-to-air missiles. Russian use of Iranian bases now marks a new level of cooperation and joint power projection.
These bombing runs cross Iraqi airspace. Before President Barack Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq, that could not have happened. The resulting vacuum has not only created a corridor for Russian bombing, it has gradually allowed a hard-won post-Saddam Iraq to slip into Iran’s orbit. According to a Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman, there are 100,000 Shiite militia fighters operating inside Iraq, 80 percent of them Iranian-backed.
— Syria
When Russia dramatically intervened last year, establishing air bases and launching a savage bombing campaign, Obama did nothing. Indeed, he smugly predicted that Vladimir Putin had entered a quagmire. Some quagmire. Bashar Assad’s regime is not only saved. It encircled Aleppo and has seized the upper hand in the civil war. Meanwhile, our hapless secretary of state is running around trying to sue for peace, offering to share intelligence and legitimize Russian intervention if only Putin will promise to conquer gently.
Consider what Putin has achieved. Dealt a very weak hand — a rump Russian state, shorn of empire and saddled with a backward economy and a rusting military — he has restored Russia to great power status. Reduced to irrelevance in the 1990s, it is now a force to be reckoned with.
In Europe, Putin has unilaterally redrawn the map. His annexation of Crimea will not be reversed. The Europeans are eager to throw off the few sanctions they grudgingly imposed on Russia. And the rape of eastern Ukraine continues.
Ten thousand have already died and now Putin is threatening even more open warfare. Under the absurd pretext of Ukrainian terrorism in Crimea, Putin has threatened retaliation, massed troops in eight locations on the Ukrainian border, ordered Black Sea naval exercises, and moved advanced anti-aircraft batteries into Crimea, giving Moscow control over much of Ukrainian airspace.
And why shouldn’t he? He’s pushing on an open door. Obama still refuses to send Ukraine even defensive weapons.
The administration’s response to these provocations? Urging “both sides” to exercise restraint. Both sides, mind you.
(I wish I could underline that last sentence for emphasis, or bold it or something.)
And in a gratuitous flaunting of its newly expanded reach, Russia will be conducting joint naval exercises with China in the South China Sea, in obvious support of Beijing’s territorial claims and illegal military bases.
Yet the president shows little concern. He is too smart not to understand geopolitics; he simply doesn’t care. (What have I been saying all along? He just DOES NOT CARE.)
In part because his priorities are domestic. In part because he thinks we lack clean hands and thus the moral standing to continue to play international arbiter.
And in part because he’s convinced that in the long run it doesn’t matter. Fluctuations in great power relations are inherently ephemeral. For a man who sees a moral arc in the universe bending inexorably toward justice, calculations of raw realpolitik are 20th-century thinking — primitive, obsolete, the obsession of small minds.
Obama made all of this perfectly clear in speeches at the United Nations, in Cairo and here at home in his very first year in office. Two terms later, we see the result. Ukraine dismembered. Eastern Europe on edge. Syria a charnel house. Iran subsuming Iraq. Russia and Iran on the march across the entire northern Middle East.
At the heart of this disorder is a simple asymmetry. It is in worldview. The major revisionist powers — China, Russia and Iran — know what they want: power, territory, tribute. And they’re going after it. Obama takes Ecclesiastes’ view that these are vanities, nothing but vanities.
In the kingdom of heaven, no doubt.
Here on Earth, however — Aleppo to Donetsk, Estonia, to the Spratly Islands — it matters greatly.
Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist. Email him at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
My comment: Idealism is a mental disorder, disconnected from the hard-core reality of geopolitics. If we don’t get someone into the White House who can put us back on top, we’re screwed. And frankly, I don’t think we’ll have anyone like that again in my lifetime.
“Reports of link between prisoner release & payment to Iran are completely false,” tweeted State Department Spokesman Kirby. That was a flagrant lie. One of the releasees was a Washington Post reporter or stringer and all four had dual Iran/US citizenship. Of course, the money wasn’t all of the deal. In fact, it appears to have been a late development, probably demanded by Iran in a moment of brilliance, but only after seven Iranians who were facing trial in the US or were serving time in the US for crimes were granted a full pardon by oBaMa. I don’t care whether it’s called ransom or not. Usually, that word is associated with kidnapping. Technically, they weren’t kidnapped. They were charged with crimes against the state. I prefer the word extortion. Either way, it was a bad deal for the US and the scenario will be repeated. Why shouldn’t it? It pays. One last thought. Any private American stupid enough to go to that shithole should be on his own come what may.
“One last thought. Any private American stupid enough to go to that shithole should be on his own come what may”.
^^^^ Like ^^^^
After spending time and/or money to get out of that 3d world shithole, why would anyone spend a nickel to go back?
If the State Department had come out before the exchange and said ” hey, we are returning Iranian assets that were seized during the Carter administration. However, return of said assets will not occur until all hostages held by Iran are released to United States authority”, they’d have 90% of Americans thinking they were heroes.
I am not sure this is an inadvertent admission of obvious fact – looks a lot more to me like overwhelming arrogance: “We can do what we want and say what we want, and if we wait a few weeks to tell the truth, 99% of the ignorant fools will ignore it or miss it. The 1% who are paying attention? We say “we already talked about that” and blow them off.
Bribe, extortion, ransom – it’s all a simple blowjob.