One of the most satisfying things to see is when liars get their just desserts. When people willingly go on live TV and in front of millions and lie through their teeth, there’s nothing I’d like to see more than to have their closet full of skeletons get exposed to the world. And joy of joys, that’s what happened today, with the State Department directly contradicting a lie Barack Obama told about the $400 million he paid to Iran in return for imprisoned US soldiers.
For those of you that aren’t up to speed, Iran held soldiers captive for years, seemingly until Donald Trump made it a national issue in this year’s campaign. Obama, off the heels of the Iran nuclear deal that gave our greatest enemy the resources to destroy neighboring nations, asked Iran to hand over the soldiers it detained. At the same time, a plane with a pallet of $400 million in cash was dropped off in Iranian airspace.
To any thinking person, this would look like a ransom payment. However, Obama stood strong in his assertion that this was not a ransom payment and not contingent on the release of soldiers from Iran. These were two separate transactions, according to him.
Here’s the clip:
Yeah, I don’t buy it, and neither did America, to such an extent that the State Department had to call a press conference to dispel any rumors. Unfortunately for Obama, all they did was throw Obama directly under the bus by directly contradicting his initial statements.
Here’s what Spokesperson John Kirby said about the matter:
According to the NY Post,
State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked at a press briefing: “In basic English, you’re saying you wouldn’t give them $400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?”
“That’s correct,” he replied.
In an Aug. 4 press conference, Obama said the opposite.“We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future,” the president told reporters, speaking of the January payment and hostage release.
Families “know we have a policy that we don’t pay ransom. And the notion that we would somehow start now, in this high-profile way, and announce it to the world, even as we’re looking in the faces of other hostage families whose loved ones are being held hostage, and saying to them we don’t pay ransom, defies logic,” Obama added at the time.
He even lectured the press for daring to raise the issue.
“It’s been interesting to watch this story surface. Some of you may recall, we announced these payments in January. Many months ago. There wasn’t a secret. We announced them to all of you. [Press Secretary Josh Earnest] did a briefing on them.
This wasn’t some nefarious deal,” the president said.
“It wasn’t a secret. We were completely open with everybody about it and it is interesting to me how suddenly this became a story again,”
The US claims the money, delivered in cash stacks aboard an unmarked cargo plane, was part of a settlement of a long standing dispute with the Iranian regime over a never-completed arms deal from the 1970s.
Kirby continued to maintain Thursday that “the two negotiations were separate,” referring to the hostage release and the arms deal.
Kirby’s comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported that the plane carrying $400 million crisscrossed the one returning the four Americans.
In addition, a writer from the Wall Street Journal pressed Kirby on these claims, asking him what, in particular, he objected to when the press called it a ransom. Kirby just froze, then backtracked as hard as he could, knowing that he screwed up something fierce.
I can’t wait until we get Obama and his lying Administration out of our political sphere for good. They don’t care about lying to the American public, and they don’t care about propping up the economies of countries that want to see us literally erased from the world map. For shame.