The former Obama officials who manufactured a media “echo chamber” to sell the Iran deal are now working to undermine a bombshell report that revealed how former President Barack Obama’s administration derailed its own Drug Enforcement Agency’s efforts to stop Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah from developing a global narcotics syndicate.
The Obama administration gave Hezbollah a pass, according to a bombshell Politico piece, in order to protect the Iran deal — one of the few remaining pillars of Barack Obama’s legacy.
Two Republicans on the House oversight committee, Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan announced a congressional investigation into the scandal on Thursday, calling on the Department of Justice to release all documents on the subject.
Former deputy national security Ben Rhodes has spearheaded an effort to discredit the Politico report, attacking it as a made up right-wing conspiracy, even though Politico is a left-leaning news organization.
Other Obama officials, including former National Security Council officials Tommy Vietor and Ned Price, have mobilized to spin an exculpatory media narrative ahead of coming investigations into the scandal.
Organizations funded by the Ploughshares Fund, a left-wing donor group that helped the Obama administration manufacture positive Iran deal coverage, have pushed that same narrative smearing the Politico story.
There are many reasonable critiques of Obama’s foreign policy. The idea that he was soft on Hezbollah is not one of them. The story is so manufactured out of thin air that it’s hard to push back except to say that it’s a figment of the imagination of two very flawed sources.
Rhodes, Vietor and Price have been “blatantly lying” about the story since it broke, Politico reporter Josh Meyer stated Wednesday night.
“You’ve either not read it or are willfully disregarding the many other people quoted, the documents people can link to and the obvious facts,” Meyer saidin a series of tweets addressed to the trio.
“I’m compiling a list of [questions] to post for you guys, and for the congressional hearings,” Meyer said.
Rhodes bragged to the New York Times last year that he duped reporters who “literally know nothing” into helping him create an “echo chamber” around the Iran deal.
The Obama administration also used outside groups including Ploughshares to help create their echo chamber.
Ploughshares, it was revealed after the Iran deal was struck, funded media organizations and reporters as part of their efforts to manufacture a favorable media narrative. National Public Radio was among the complicit outlets and accepted $100,000 from Ploughshares.
Rhodes, Prince and Vietor have all remained in the public forum, attacking Trump and pushing pro-Iran deal talking points since leaving the White House. Rhodes’ attacks on Trump are often quoted in the media, while Prince is now an NBC contributor and Vietor co-hosts popular left-wing podcast Pod Save America.
Ploughshares, meanwhile, is still churning out narratives in favor of the Iran Deal.
Immediately after the Politico story broke, Ploughshares president Joe Cirincione, an MSNBC contributor, attacked it as a “shabby neocon hit piece.”
Ploughshares-funded members of the echo chamber have been pushing out the same talking points as the Obama officials in response to the Hezbollah scandal.
Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American council, wrote anopinion piece for HuffPost defending the Obama administration against the Politico report. Parsi insisted that Obama’s treatment of Hezbollah had nothing to do with the Iran deal and dismissed the Politico report as “based on a conspiracy theory.”
What Parsi’s column did not disclose is that Ploughshares has given his organization $263,000 in grants between 2013 and 2017 for work in support of the Iran deal, according to a Daily Caller review of Plougshares’ annual reports over that time.
Ilan Goldenberg, Middle East director at the Ploughshares-funded Center for New American Studies, similarly trashed the Politico report as as a “conspiracy theory.”
Meyer said Thursday that he is the target of “an orchestrated smear campaign which STILL hasn’t contested a single fact” in his story.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Hello again, Sebastien.
Edgar mentioned his school blazer and boater. When I think of boaters, my thoughts go to Hope and Crosby. Crosby’s roots are in County Cork, Ireland, which Edgar may gravitate towards; but I lean (as in the link photo) more towards Hope, who is one of the funniest, most talented actors alive (Dick Van Dyke is certainly in his league). He’s from London, of English and Welsh background.
How did I end up talking to you again? I’ve been longing for years, to get into a serious, HONEST discussion with someone about the scriptures, and in my seeking, I meet devotees of Groucho Marx and the Heart Sutra. Oy veh! Edgar at least tried to give me a sensible response, before his computer ate the results; but you? I ask for firewood, and get dried grass — crackle, crackle, POOF!
I don’t want to put you guys down. That doesn’t benefit anyone. I just wish there were SOMEONE, on the whole world-wide web, who has looked into the Bible seriously and honestly: and you already know what I mean by “honest”. You can’t be honest when discussing scriptures, unless you’re talking about things from your own heart — not what some rabbi or TV evangelist has said. You have to first of all believe that God wants to talk to you through the Word; because if He doesn’t, then we are adrift in the universe: and you won’t get my “drift”, and I won’t get yours; it just leads to aimless discussions. Once you BELIEVE that God really IS trying to communicate — as improbable as this may seem — with Sebastien Zorn, then you can actually read His stuff and try to get something out of it: things like “Which way is up?” “Where am I?” “What am I doing?” and “Where am I going?” These are all good questions which, believe me, hardly anyone seems to have the answers to .
Jerusalem. The world is absolutely NUTSY about Jerusalem, don’t you agree? Why? Might the answer be in the Bible? Or in the Tibetan Book of the Dead? If you answer, “the latter”, pardon me if I jump out of the way, so as not to get hit in the face by burning grass.
By the way, Bastien. You might or might not take comfort, in the fact that I seem to be able to communicate better with Jews than I am with Christians. Jews have trouble with “groupthink”; but Christians have made an art of it.
Hi, Edgar.
I can understand the “Lone Ranger” reference; because the Bundys have been portrayed as renegades, a law unto themselves. I sympathize with them, though, because they have been persecuted by an armed federal bureaucracy that really has no place in the areas it’s policing. They’re all fired up and agitated about spotted owls and striped newts; but they come out with guns blazing to nab a cowboy who hasn’t dotted an “i” on his paperwork.
God bless and keep you and Sebastien.
Shalom shalom. What are you doing, Sebastien? This is highly irregular. Why do you have a screwdriver in your hand?
@ Michael S:
Hope or Crosby? Name your faction, pardner.
@ Michael S:
Abetter cry would be ……..”Hi-Ho Silver…”
@ Edgar G.:
Hi, Edgar.
I got tired of talking to young Sebastien, and thought I would check up on someone with style
http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/4698/6747831_5.jpg?v=8C94072B89CD280
I just surfed around, to see if Sessions has been doing anything useful lately. Nope — he seems to be wholeheartedly trying to get rid of America’s cowboys and pot smokers. Other than that, you seem to be on the mark. I think Cliven Bundy and his boys would do a better job:
https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Bundy_standoff_AP_img.jpg
Whoopie ti, you liberals! Ride em out! Hyaaah!
@ watsa46:
Sessions must be the most useless and disappointing occupant of an important post in the whole government. So far I haven’t seen him do anything, open any investigations, even discuss anything except his favourite mantra….”I will recuse myself..”
There must be enough open public knowledge evidence against Obama to have him impeached a dozen times…so far. And new scandals are emerging weekly.
WE hear constantly that the left loves power. Actually this is far from the truth. The left has a lust for the ABUSE of Power and for the abuse of women. This is what socialo/communism is about.
The left must own a lot of shredders, hammers, bleach etc. They will need plenty of those items. We are fed Alinsky M. O. @ sunset, @ breakfast, @ 10:00 AM, @ lunch, @ tea time, @ sundown, @ dinner, @ supper and @ bed time, each time with a zest of PC and peppered with lots of Kapo $.
Sessions decision to give a pass on IRS/Lerner abuse of power is a bad omen.
Paying the media for lies? what’s new except the fake media lying for nothing.
Investigate, get the Evidence, Arrest and Prosecute. (PEAP). Unfortunately this seems to have become a buried concept in the US Justice system as applied to the rich. Someone has stolen the blindfold from the Statue of Liberty so search Obama and Hillary.