Congreslid Ilhan Omar fileert het monster Elliot Abrams, de speciale gezant van de VS voor Venezuela

In een vergadering over de politiek ten aanzien van Venezuela heeft Democratisch congreslid* Ilhan Omar het oorlogsmonster Abrams het vel over de oren getrokken. Abrams is de oorlogsmisdadiger die is aangesteld door de Trump administratie om de VS acties tegen de democratisch gekozen president van Venezuela te coördineren als speciaal gezant voor de VS...... 

Abrams is bekend van zijn bloedig acties tegen voormalige regeringen in Latijns-Amerika en het in stand houden van dictaturen die de VS welgevallig waren, zo is de schoft mede verantwoordelijk voor een genocide in Guatemala en voorts in diverse Latijns-Amerikaanse landen: moord, verkrachtingen, martelingen en ontvoeringen.........

Lees en zie (video) hoe Omar Abrams op een geweldige manier te kakken zet en zie de smerige reacties van schoften die achter Abrams staan. Abrams zou nu een mensenrechtenactivist zijn, althans als je het geteisem moet geloven, dat dit gelul van een dronken aardbei is, blijkt wel uit het feit dat de Trump administratie deze smerige schoft heeft aangesteld om de coup in Venezuela in de juiste VS banen te leiden........ 

Moet je nagaan, het voorgaande nadat de VS de laatste 10 jaar het volk van Venezuela steeds dieper in de ellende heeft gestort met een smerige economische oorlog........

Overigens was Omar onlangs al in opspraak over haar uitlatingen t.a.v. AIPAC**

Het volgende artikel werd geschreven door Caitlin Johnstone en werd eerder geplaatst op haar website, door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media:

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar Smacks Down Elliott Abrams in Front of Everybody

February 13, 2019 at 7:35 pm

Written by Caitlin Johnstone

(CJ Opinion) — Days after being smashed with a vicious establishment smear campaign to paint her as an antisemite for accurately criticizing AIPAC, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is already back on the horse aggressively disrupting the establishment narrative matrix that our rulers have worked so hard to construct for us.

Elliott Abrams is a monster. The atrocities that he has facilitated, covered up and whitewashed in Panama, El Salvador, Gaza, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Iraq are utterly unforgivable, and the fact that he has been appointed as special envoy to Venezuela by the Trump administration completely invalidates the US government’s Venezuela narrative all by itself. Even without the blatant lies, the known oil agendas, the CIA ops, the mounting evidence of US arms smuggling to right-wing militias, and America’s extensive history of utterly disastrous regime change interventionism, the fact that this administration would appoint such a ghoulish individual to spearhead its Venezuela interventionism alone is enough to show you that the US government has nothing but malevolent intentions for that nation.

So it was nice to see someone in that government calling him what he is right to his face in front of everybody.

At a House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) hearing on US Venezuela policy, Abrams was presented with the only line of questioning that is appropriate for such a beast by the very congresswoman the Democrats threw to the wolves just two days ago. Someone had to do it, and they left it to Ilhan Omar.

“In 1991, you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding your involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush,” Omar accurately stated. “I fail to understand why members of this committee, or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.”

“If I could respond to that-” Abrams began.

“That wasn’t a question,” Omar responded, cutting him off.

“It was an attack! It was an attack!” Abrams exclaimed, visibly upset.

“I reserve the right to my time,” said Omar.

“It is not right that members of this Committee can attack a witness who is not permitted to reply,” Abrams said, talking over Omar.

“That was not a question; thank you for your participation,” Omar continued. “On February 8th, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about US foreign policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as communist propaganda a report about the massacre of El Mozote of which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as two years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping 12 year-old girls before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a ‘fabulous achievement.’ Yes or no, do you still think so?”

“From the day that President Duarte was elected in a free election, to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy,” Abrams said angrily. “That’s a fabulous achievement.”

“Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?” Omar asked.

“That is a ridiculous question and I will not respond to it,” Abrams replied. “I’m sorry Mr. Chairman, I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack which is not a question.”

“I will take that as a yes,” Omar said. “Yes or no, would you support an armed faction within Venezuela that engages in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide if you believe they were serving US interests as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua?”

“I’m not going to respond to that question,” Abrams again answered. “I’m sorry, I don’t think this entire line of questioning is meant to be real questions, and so I will not reply.”

“Whether under your watch a genocide will take place, and you will look the other way because American interests were being upheld is a fair question,” Omar said. “Because the American people want to know that any time we engage a country that we think about what our actions could be and how we believe our values are being furthered. That is my question: Will you make sure that human rights are not violated and that we uphold international and human rights?”

“I suppose there is a question in there, and the answer is that the entire thrust of American policy in Venezuela is to support the Venezuelan people’s effort to restore democracy to their country,” Abrams responded. “That’s our policy.”

“I don’t think anybody disputes that,” Omar said. “The question I had for you is that does the interests of the United States include protecting human rights and include protecting people against genocide?”

“That is always the position of the United States,” Abrams lied.

“Thank you,” concluded Omar. “I yield back the rest of my time.”

The Discourse Lover@Trillburne

It should be emphasized that the atrocities in Guatemala have been legally recognized as a genocide. This is tantamount to Holocaust denial.

Max Boot

✔@MaxBoot

Disgraceful ad hominem attacks by @IlhanMN on my @CFR_org colleague Elliott Abrams. She doesn't seem to realize he is a leading advocate of human rights and democracy--not a promoter of genocide! More evidence of the loony left I caution Democrats about: https://wapo.st/2DBb8x3  https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1095777138328961024 …

There is no legitimate reason for Elliott Abrams to ever find himself before a group of people who are ostensibly concerned with accountability and responsibility without being asked such questions. But that didn’t stop all the world’s worst people from crawling out of the woodwork to his defense.

“Disgraceful ad hominem attacks by @IlhanMN on my @CFR_org colleague Elliott Abrams,” tweeted Iraq-raping neocon Max Boot. “She doesn’t seem to realize he is a leading advocate of human rights and democracy — not a promoter of genocide! More evidence of the loony left I caution Democrats about.”

I worked for Elliott Abrams as a civil servant,” tweeted Kelly Magsamen, Vice President of National Security for the plutocrat-backed liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP). “He is a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy. Yes, he made serious professional mistakes and was held accountable. I’m a liberal but I’m also fair. We all have a lot of work to do together in Venezuela. We share goals.”

“I am not greatly sympathetic to Rep. Omar (surprise surprise),” tweeted National Review senior editor and former George W Bush speech writer Jay Nordlinger. “But really, someone ought to have given her a clue who Elliott Abrams is. The guy has been championing freedom and human rights his entire life (and taking unholy sh** for it from the illiberal Left and Right).”

Conservative pundit Michael Knowles tossed his two cents into the campaign to purge the concept of antisemitism of any meaning by tweeting, “One wonders why @IlhanMN seems to harbor such particular contempt for Elliott¹ Abrams² (¹ from the Hebrew ‘Elijah,’ meaning ‘My God is Yahweh’ ² the father of the Jewish people).”

Michael Knowles

✔@michaeljknowles

One wonders why @IlhanMN seems to harbor such particular contempt for Elliott¹ Abrams².

¹ from the Hebrew "Elijah," meaning "My God is Yahweh"
² the father of the Jewish people

2,974

9:37 PM - Feb 13, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy

This is the bipartisan establishment orthodoxy that is guiding your foreign policy, America. One which claims Elliott Abrams is a saint, which claims criticism of US warmongering is antisemitic, and which throws a bold Somali-American woman under the bus for speaking the truth after years of paying lip service to the need to get more women of color elected to the leadership of the Democratic Party. This whole Abrams incident happened, by the way, at the same time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deleted a tweet in which he accidentally acknowledged the agenda to start a war with Iran, but you probably won’t see Omar commenting on this because she knows she’ll be smeared as an antisemite for it.

US warmongering is the most aggressively protected part of the establishment narrative matrix, because US warmongering is the glue that holds the unipolar empire together. Without it, our rulers cannot rule, so you’ll see imperial lackeys fiercely attacking anyone who draws attention to America’s bloodbaths around the world, even if they are good servants of the empire in other areas.

The difficulty for our rulers, though, is that warmongering is a very difficult thing to paint a pretty picture of, especially with our newfound ability to quickly share ideas and information around the globe. I mean, look at Elliott Abrams. Seriously, just watch him talk. That demonic grimace is the prettiest face they could find to put on their Venezuela agenda. I find that very encouraging.

The reason they work so hard to manufacture our consent for warmongering agendas is because they need that consent. They wouldn’t propagandize us so aggressively if they didn’t need us all trusting them and believing their stories, so the best way to fight establishment warmongering is to circulate disbelief in their stories. Whenever you see someone like Ilhan Omar drawing attention to the gaping plot holes in agendas like regime change interventionism in Venezuela, go ahead and help draw attention to it.

Things are only shitty because a few extremely powerful people do very shitty things. The only reason powerful people get away with doing very shitty things is because the majority allows them to. The majority only allows them to because they’ve been propagandized to. The weakest link in this chain is the propaganda. Attack there.

Support Caitlin’s work on Patreon or Paypal.

Opinion by Caitlin Johnstone / Republished with permission / Medium / Report a typo

=====================================
*  Ter verduidelijking: Ilhan Omar, heeft sinds 2017 een zetel in het lagerhuis van Minnesota voor de Minnesota Demcratic-Farmer-Labor Party (toegevoegd op 10 maart 2019)

** Zie: 'AIPAC, een pro-Israël lobbygroep, koopt leden van het VS congres om met 4 miljoen dollar per jaar'

Zie ook:
'Venezuela: 15 doden door sabotage elektriciteitsnet'

'Venezuela: het VS volk wordt weer een oorlog in gelogen, zoals eerder in Irak, Libië en Syrië'

'Venezuela: bijt de VS in haar eigen staart?'

'Jill Stein (US Green Party): de VS maakt zich druk over armoede in Venezuela terwijl de armen thuis kunnen doodvallen....'

'Venezuela: humanitaire hulp stunt van de VS ingegeven om de kruistocht tegen Maduro een versnelling te geven'

'Venezuela: Abrams vindt een meerderheid in de VN Veiligheidsraad genoeg voor een gedwongen regeringswisseling

'Venezuela: 4 belangrijke zaken aangaande humanitaire hulp waarover de reguliere media niet berichten'

'Trump en Bolton bedreigen openlijk de familie van Venezolaanse militairen'

'Venezuela: VS bedrijf dat wapens smokkelde is gelinkt aan CIA 'Black Site' centra'

'Venezuela >> de media willen het socialisme definitief de nek omdraaien'

'BBC World Service radio >> fake news and other lies about Venezuela' (bericht van dit blog)

'Joel Voordewind (CU 2de Kamer) bakt de 'Venezolaanse vluchtelingencrisis' op Curaçao wel erg bruin en van Ojik (GL 2de Kamer) schiet een Venezolaanse bok'

'Venezolaanse verandering van regime bekokstoofd door VS en massamedia'

'Venezuela zou humanitaire hulp weigeren, het echte verhaal ziet er 'iets anders' uit'

'Guaidó is een ordinaire couppleger van de VS, e.e.a. gaat volledig in tegen de Venezolaanse constitutie'

'Venezuela >> regime change: 'de 12 stappen methode' die de VS gebruikt'

'Venezuela >> VS economische oorlogsvoering met gebruikmaking van o.a. IMF en Wereldbank'

'VS couppleger in Venezuela belooft VS Venezolaanse olie als hij de macht heeft overgenomen'

Pompeo: US Military Obligated to “Take Down” the Iranians in Venezuela

(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onder doet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen... ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging...)

'Halliburton en Chevron hebben groot belang bij 'regime change' in Venezuela'

'Mike Pence (vicepresident VS) gaf Guaidó, de door de VS gewenste leider, groen licht voor de coup in Venezuela'

'VS coup tegen Maduro in volle gang........'

'Antiwar Hero Medea Benjamin Disrupts Pompeo Speech on Venezuela'

'Venezuela’s Military Chief, Foreign Allies Back Maduro'

'Als de VS stopt met spelen van 'politieagent' en het vernielen van de wereld, zullen de slechte krachten winnen......'

'VS weer op oorlogspad in Latijns-Amerika: Venezuela het volgende slachtoffer.......'

'Venezuela: VS verandering van regime mislukt >> de Venezolanen wacht een VS invasie'

Vast Majority of Democrats Remain Silent or Support Coup in Venezuela

'Trump wilde naast de economische oorlogsvoering tegen Venezuela dat land daadwerkelijk militair aanvallen......'

'Venezolaanse regionale verkiezingen gehekeld door westen, terwijl internationale waarnemers deze als eerlijk beoordeelden..........'

'Venezuela: Target of Economic Warfare'

'Venezuela: de anti-propaganda van John Oliver (en het grootste deel westerse massamedia) feilloos doorgeprikt'

'Venezuela: 'studentenprotest' wordt uitgevoerd door ingehuurde troepen.........'

'Abby Martin Busts Open Myths on Venezuela's Food Crisis: 'Shelves Fully Stocked'' (zie ook de video in dat artikel!)

'Rex Tillerson waarschuwt Venezuela voor een coup en beschuldigt China van imperialisme........ ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Edwin Koopman (VPRO Bureau Buitenland) over Venezolaanse verkiezingen met anti-Maduro propaganda bij de 'onafhankelijke NOS.....'

'EU neemt uiterst hypocriet sancties tegen de Venezolaanse regering Maduro.........'

'Venezuela ontwricht, wat de reguliere media u niet vertellen........'

'VS steunt rechtse coalitie (MUD) in Venezuela.........'

'Venezuela’s US-Backed Opposition Turns Up The Violence Following Assembly Vote'

'10 Things You Need to Know About the Terrorist Attack in Venezuela'

'Venezuelans in the Streets to Support Constituent Assembly'

'What Mainstream Media Got Wrong About Venezuela's Constituent Assembly Vote' (met mogelijkheid tot directe vertaling)

'The Left and Venezuela' (met mogelijkheid tot directe vertaling)

'Rondje Venezuela schoppen op Radio1.........'

'Karabulut (SP) blij dat ze Maduro eindelijk ook kan schoppen.........'

'Venezuela moet en zal 'verlost' worden van Maduro, met 'oh wonder' een dikke rol van de VS en de reguliere westerse media'

'Venezolaanse regering treedt terecht op tegen de uiterst gewelddadige oppositie!!'
========================

Meer berichten met Omar:
'Ilhan Omar: Obama zette kinderen in een kooi en kwam weg met moord'

'Madeline Albright 'gegrild' over illegale interventies en sancties van de VS'


'AIPAC, een pro-Israël lobbygroep, koopt leden van het VS congres om met 4 miljoen dollar per jaar'

Oliver North, ex-CIA, oud-drugslord en oorlogsmisdadiger waarschijnlijk nieuwe president terreurorganisatie NRA......

Lees het volgende uitstekende artikel van Jon Schwarz, gepubliceerd op The Intercept, over Oliver North die van drugslord, nu waarschijnlijk snel zal worden gebombardeerd (deden ze dat maar letterlijk) tot president van terreurorganisatie NRA, ofwel de National Rifle Association......

Leden van de NRA snappen nog steeds niet dat alcohol één van de dodelijkste harddrugs op de wereld is, maar hebben wel de pest aan alles wat men verder illegale drugs* noemt (waar ze uiteraard ook cannabis toe rekenen......). Geen nood voor deze veelal hypocriete christenen, Oliver North wordt ondanks zijn rol als 'drugslord' en terrorist gewoon als held gezien, terwijl hij een oorlogsmisdadiger is die berecht zou moeten worden voor het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag (het ICC).....

Als North bijvoorbeeld een Colombiaan was geweest, had men hem al lang opgesloten in de VS vanwege zijn bemoeienis met de invoer van enorme hoeveelheden cocaïne (in de VS).....

Voorts heeft North de Contra's in Nicaragua, een terreurgroep die tegen de socialistische regering vocht, gesteund met wapens, die hij kocht van de winsten gemaakt met drugshandel....

Ach het voorgaande geeft ten overvloede nog eens aan waarvoor de NRA staat: grootschalige terreur op de straten, scholen en andere openbare gelegenheden van de VS.......

OLIVER NORTH WORKED WITH COCAINE TRAFFICKERS TO ARM TERRORISTS. NOW HE’LL BE PRESIDENT OF THE NRA.

     Jon Schwarz

  May 12 2018, 2:03 p.m.

THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION has always been clear about drugs: They’re terrifying.

Last year, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre darkly warned that members of drug gangs “are infiltrating law enforcement and even the military.” In 2013, LaPierre proclaimed that “Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States,” and are a key part of the “hellish world” that awaits us in the future. When Charlton Heston was president of the NRA in the 1990s, he declared that regular Americans would soon be besieged by 10,000 drug dealers freed from prison by the Clinton administration.

It seems odd, then, that the next president of the NRA will soon be Oliver North, who spent years in the 1980s working together with large-scale cocaine traffickers and protecting a notorious narco-terrorist from the rest of the U.S. government.

This reality about North has been largely covered up, first by North himself and then by Fox News and the passage of time. Thirty years later, it’s been almost totally forgotten. But the facts remain genuinely appalling.

North was an active-duty Marine when he joined the Reagan administration’s National Security Council in 1981. One of Reagan’s top priorities was organizing and funding the Contras, a guerrilla military force, to overthrow the revolutionary socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. But the Contras engaged in extensive, gruesome terrorism against Nicaraguan civilians. Congress gradually reduced and then eliminated appropriations supporting them, leading the Reagan administration to secretly search for money elsewhere.

According to the report from a later congressional investigation, North was put in charge of this operation, which participants dubbed “The Enterprise.”

"Report of the congressional committees investigating the Iran-Contra Affair,” U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran; U.S. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, 1987

North enthusiastically looked for cash wherever he could find it, and led many of the clandestine schemes that later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. The Sultan of Brunei donated $10 million (which North’s secretary Fawn Hall accidentally wired to the wrong Swiss bank account), and Saudi Arabia ponied up as well. North also pushed what he called “a neat idea”: selling U.S. military equipment to Iran, with the proceeds passed along to the Contras.

Meanwhile, the Contras had a neat idea of their own: facilitating cocaine trafficking through Central America into the U.S., with a cut going toward supporting their war against the Sandinistas. Some Contras were themselves cocaine traffickers, and others were simply happy to make alliances of convenience with drug cartels.

There’s no evidence North actively wanted cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. It was simply that he had other priorities. But was he aware of the Contras’ drug trafficking? Yes. Did he try to shield one of “his” cocaine traffickers from consequences from the other branches of the U.S. government? Yes. Did he work together with a known drug lord? Yes.

All in all, North’s connections to drug trafficking were so egregious that in 1989 he was banned from entering Nicaragua’s neighbor Costa Rica by Oscar Arias, the country’s president and 1987 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

This may seem shocking to the easily shocked. But it’s all been documented in various government investigations. All you need in order to learn about it is curiosity and an internet connection. For instance, here’s a screenshot from the CIA’s website about the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance, or ADREN by its Spanish acronym, which was later folded into the Contras:

"Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States,” CIA, 1998

The full extent of North’s complicity in cocaine trafficking will never be known. When the Iran-Contra scandal story broke in November 1986, he ordered Hall to destroy so many documents that the shredder malfunctioned, and she had to ask White House maintenance to come and fix it. Moreover, when North was removed from his National Security Council (NSC) job, he took with him 2,848 pages of daily notes — which legally belonged to the federal government. By the time a congressional investigation was finally able to examine the notes, North and his lawyers had redacted huge amounts of information.

Nonetheless, 543 of the pages mentioned drugs or drug trafficking, with the probe finding that “in many of these cases, material in the Notebooks adjacent to the narcotics references has been deleted.”

"Drugs, Law Enforcement And Foreign Policy,” U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1989

But despite North’s cover-up, what we do know for sure is incredibly damning.

Perhaps most significantly, according to North’s own notes he met with Panama’s then-dictator Manuel Noriega in London in September 1986 to collaborate on a plan for Noriega to support the Contras in return for American money and arms. They discussed sabotaging a Nicaraguan airport and oil refinery, as well as creating a program to train Contra and Afghan mujahedeen commandos in Panama with Israeli help. (It’s not completely clear, but North appears to have written that “Rabin” – i.e., Yitzhak Rabin, who was then Israel’s minister of defense – “approves.”)

North was clearly enthusiastic about the potential partnership with Noriega. In an earlier email selling the proposal to one of his superiors, he wrote that “we might have available a very effective, very secure means of doing some of the things which must be done if the Nicaragua project is going to succeed. … I believe we could make the appropriate arrangements w/ reasonable OPSEC and deniability.”

Email, Oliver North to John Poindexter, May 8, 1986 (neem aan dat het niet om een email ging destijds....)

But of course, Noriega was himself a powerful drug trafficker. Knowing this didn’t require a top-secret clearance: It was published on the front page of the New York Times three months before North met with him. According to the Times article, “A White House official said the most significant drug-running in Panama was being directed by General Noriega.”

The North-Noriega operation ultimately didn’t come to fruition; the Iran-Contra affair was exposed just two months after they met. But the planning that did occur is conclusive evidence that North eagerly worked with drug dealers operating on the largest scale imaginable.

“Panama Strongman Said to Trade In Drugs, Arms and Illicit Money,” New York Times, June 11, 1986

North also went to great lengths to protect an ally who was a key participant in what the Justice Department called “the most significant case of narco-terrorism yet discovered.”

In 1984, José Bueso Rosa, a Honduran general, plotted with several others to assassinate the president of Honduras. They planned to fund the hit with the proceeds from selling 760 pounds of cocaine in the U.S.

The FBI, however, had the participants under surveillance, intercepted the shipment when it arrived at a small airfield in Florida, and arrested everyone involved.

But Bueso had played a key role in Honduran support for the Contras. So North went to work to get him off as lightly as possible. (Bueso had not himself been charged with drug trafficking, but wiretaps made it obvious he participated in that part of the project.)

In email, North explained his plans to “cabal quietly” with other Reagan administration officials “to look at options: pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence.” Eventually, North planned to have the case’s judge informed “in camera” — that is, secretly — about “our equities in this matter,” in order to push for leniency. Then, North wrote, it would be necessary to quietly brief Bueso, so that he wouldn’t “start singing songs nobody wants to hear.”

North didn’t get everything he wanted, but did succeed in having Bueso transferred to a “Club Fed” minimum security prison. Bueso was released on parole after 40 months.

THERE ARE ALSO numerous documented examples of North being informed that members of the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, with no signs that North took any action.

For instance, after meeting with a key assistant, North wrote in his notebooks about a plane being used by the brother of a top Contra leader to ferry supplies from the U.S. to Central America. “Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans,” North jotted down, “is probably being used for drug runs into U.S.”

North testified in front of Congress that he’d passed this information along to the Drug Enforcement Administration. When later questioned by the Washington Post, the DEA, the State Department, and the U.S. Customs Service all stated that there was no evidence North ever said anything about the matter to them.

Oliver North, notes, August 9, 1985

The same aide who told North about the plane also informed him about the “potential involvement with drug running” of one Contra official and that another was “now involved in drug running out of Panama.” And after a call from another subordinate, North noted that the Contras were planning to buy weapons from a Honduran warehouse — and “14 M to finance came from drugs.”

North was getting similar reports from outside the government as well. Dennis Ainsworth, a Republican real estate investor who’d volunteered to help the Contra cause, informed a U.S. attorney that the top Contra commander “was involved in drug trafficking,” but that the Nicaraguan community was frightened to come forward because “they could be blown away by Colombia hit squads.” Ainsworth said he’d tried to inform the White House about this but “we were put off by Ollie North,” and “I was even physically threatened by one of Ollie North’s associates.” (The U.S. attorney later wrote a memo with Ainsworth’s statements and transmitted it to the FBI.)

“Regarding Dennis Madden Ainsworth, Information Concerning,” FBI, January 6, 1987

North and the NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this history. When North ran for Senate in 1994, his campaign spokesperson said his involvement with the Bueso case was “old news and garbage and nobody cares about it.” In a 2004 appearance on Fox News, North called a congressional investigation that focused on the Contra-cocaine connection “a witch hunt” with witnesses “who clearly had a political agenda.”

But the extraordinarily sordid nature of North’s past will be clear to anyone who appraises it honestly. In announcing North’s appointment, Wayne LaPierre said there’s “no one better suited to serve as our President,” and he’s correct. Oscar Arias wrote Thursday that the NRA “finds in Oliver North a leader worthy of its mission.” Peter Kornbluh, who was co-director of the Iran-Contra documentation project at the National Security Archive, is even more straightforward: North, he says, is “the perfect pick to further the NRA’s reputation for favoring bloodshed and criminality over responsible gun control and ownership.”

Top photo: Former U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North gives the Invocation at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Dallas on May 4, 2018.

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* Let wel: in het Engels zijn drugs ook de medicijnen tegen ziekte enz. Het gebruik van opiaten als pijnbestrijder is één van de redenen waarom er nu zoveel ophef is in de VS over verslaafden aan die opiaten, ofwel synthetische opium zoals Oxycontin. Bij velen wordt de werking van deze opiaten in de loop van de jaren steeds zwakker, waarna ze hun toevlucht nemen tot echte, niet synthetische opiaten als heroïne.....

PS: in de kop staat dat North ex-CIA werknemer is, in feite was dit zo gezien zijn handelen met de CIA, echter officieel heeft hij nooit op de CIA loonlijst gestaan.