Project Cassandra

In the main, Politico was a strong supporter of Barack Obama and his initiatives, defending the Obama administration throughout its tenure. As Obama's infamous "Iran Deal" unfolded, Politico's editorial position was generally positive about the "deal." Those of us who opposed the Iran Deal did so because: (1) it provided significant monetary benefits to the Mullahs of Iran and got virtually nothing but empty promises in return; (2) it was unverifiable; (3) it delayed (maybe) Iran's development of nuclear weapons but did not in any way permanently eliminate it; (4) it did not retard Iran's development of ICBMs, (5) it destabilized the Middle East and set the stage for proliferation of WMDs and regional war over the next decade.

Over the two years since the deal was signed, Iran has not softened its stance toward the West, has continued and even increased its hegemony in the Middle East, continues to advocate the destruction of Israel, threatened many of our other Middle Eastern allies, continues to be a global sponsor of terror, and is otherwise a bad, bad actor in the region. So much for Obama's promise that all of this would lead to a more moderate Iran.

Obama and his foreign policy Team of 2s wanted the 'deal" so badly that they were obvious in their appeasement of the Mullahs. Now we learn that the appeasement went so far that it undermined a secret and long-term effort by the DEA to stop the Iranian backed terror group, Hezballah, from broadening its ongoing program of narcoterrorism. The same Politico that supported Obama then, reports now:

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, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed 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.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

In an extremely detailed and well-researched report (read the whole thing), Josh Meyer of Politico described how the Obama administration undermined and eventually killed the DEA program because they feared that it would cause the Mullahs to walk away from the "deal" Obama so desperately wanted.

To help justify their actions, members of Obama's Team of 2s tried to soften the danger posed by Hezballah. Meyer reports:

The man who would become Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director, John Brennan went further. He recommended in a policy paper that “the next president has the opportunity to set a new course for relations between the two countries” through not only a direct dialogue, but “greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system.”

By May 2010, Brennan, then assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, confirmed in a speech that the administration was looking for ways to build up “moderate elements” within Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah is a very interesting organization,” Brennan told a Washington conference, saying it had evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and, ultimately, a political party with representatives in the Lebanese Parliament and Cabinet, according to a Reuters report.

“There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they’re doing,” Brennan said. “And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.”

In practice, the administration’s willingness to envision a new role for Hezbollah in the Middle East, combined with its desire for a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear program, translated into a reluctance to move aggressively against the top Hezbollah operatives, according to Project Cassandra members and others.

The sheer idiocy (it couldn't possibly be naivete) of Brennan's statements is breathtaking. Hezballah is among the very worst actors in the Middle East. It. Is. Not. Moderate. The fact that the Obama administration submarined efforts to reduce their narcoterrorist activities would seem, on its face, to be a serious breach.

Meyer provides clear evidence that the Obama administration allowed Hezballah to continue its narcoterrorist activities in an effort to appease the Mullahs of Iran. One can only wonder whether the Democrats and their trained hamsters in the main stream media will consider clear evidence of appeasement as somehow less important than fantasy claims of collusion between the current administration and the Russians. I bet they will, don't you?

UPDATE:
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It's become so predictable, it's almost as if one might conclude that there's bias.

Reminder, "fake news" includes acts of omission when they are applied to important news stories that happen to damage the trained hamsters' preferred leaders and preferred party. After all, fantasy allegations "obstruction of justice" are BIG stories, when Donald Trump is involved. But when an investigation presents irrefutable evidence that a President of the United States named Barack Obama quashed a DEA program to thwart a narcoterrorist organization moving drugs into our country from the Middle East? Nah, that's not actual obstruction of justice and it's certainly not news, is it?