Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Feet of Clay


 
          In Tuesday's column in the Daily Sun, Oliver North  blasts the Obama  administration, referring to the coming year as a "year of cover ups" ( the Bengazi disaster, the  "Fast and Furious"  operation, with a preemptive  swipe at Hilary Clinton and John Kerry.)  One thing certain  is that Olive North would know about  cover ups, having been a principal inceptor of one of the most significant cover ups of the twentieth century.  

          While serving  as a Marine,  having taken the oath many of us took, which includes the words "support and defend the Constitution... etc,"   In November 1986, North was  summoned  to testify before  a  Congressional  committee  investigating  Iran–Contra.  During those hearings, North  admitted that he had lied to Congress and conspired to violated the Boland amendment, for which, among other crimes, he was  charged. He defended his actions, stating that the Contras (who butchered  nuns, priests and other innocents) were  "freedom fighters, and characterized  the blatantly illegal  Iran–Contra scheme as a "neat idea,"  admitting  shredding government documents related to his Contra and Iranian activities and  altering  official records to delete references to  assistance to the Contras.  

          So Why attack John Kerry?  I can think of three  reasons. First, John Kerry had the nerve as a young naval officer seeing  through the fog of war in Vietnam to resign and  come back to protest it. He's not the only man to honorably serve during that period who rejected that particular action. I and many of my fellow submariners were of like mind. Second, he's the presumptive next Secretary of State, and North will back stab him before he even is sworn in, because that's how North works. Third, and maybe most significant in North's paranoid mind, is that in 1986 the John Kerry/ Christopher Dodd  subcommittee  discovered that North and others had  created a  Contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking to cover  their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the Contras,  actively working with known drug lords such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the Contras. Cleaning up North's mess involved illegally entering Panama and seizing Noriega. Instead of  a  Court Martial  (richly deserved)  North was allowed to  retire with full benefits. Makes you wonder  who was covering who,  doesn't it? Actually it doesn't make you wonder. North was taking the bullet (so to speak - being allowed to retire with full benefits and pension after a felony is not much of a bullet) to stop further investigation of  Reagan, Bush, Weinberger, and the rest of the "unindicted co-conspirators" as Nixon had been referred to. 

          Oliver North  is an  admitted felon who broke his oath, violated federal law and abetted drug dealers!  Any claim of moral high ground  is ludicrous, just  another example of the vicious partisan sniping which is his stock in trade. Oliver North is the Donald Trump of journalism with slightly better hair. Enough, already, please.

                                 Mike Dorman

                                  Poinciana

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