SO IT was all a coincidence. Complete coincidence. It might have walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, but it was a goose all along. Actually, a badger.
Republicans are way off on this one. Didn’t they listen to the president’s own words earlier this month? For the record, and because Republicans always seem so suspicious, here are a few of them: “We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future.”
President Obama was referring to the $400 million payment to Iran earlier this year. Which was not made in return for the release of four hostages being held in Iran. The president was clear on that:
“Those 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.”
He assured We the People this was not some “nefarious deal.”
His people were just as adamant, and probably just as distrusted by Republicans:
“First of all,” said the secretary of state, “the United States of America does not pay ransom and does not negotiate ransoms with any country. We never have and we’re not doing that now. It is not our policy.”
The president’s always helpful press secretary even made fun of reporters who would suggest otherwise, saying that the covert delivery of money to the Iranian regime “might make for a colorful news story,” but little else.
Crazy reporters with their crazy conspiracy theories. It was a payment that has been held up since 1979. Both nations have been negotiating how and when to pay off an old military debt (made back when there still was a Shah of Iran) and it just so happened that the two sides made the deal when a couple of guests of Iran were boarding a plane to leave. That’s all.
Or that was all.
Because that was way back in early August. It’s late August now.
From a story from the Associated Press, printed in your daily statewide paper Friday: “President Barack Obama’s administration said Thursday that a $400 million cash payment to Iran seven months ago was contingent on the release of a group of Americans held prisoner by the Islamic Republic.”
The earlier stuff? Down the memory hole. (We were never at war with Eastasia. We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.)
WHAT NOW? We shudder to think. Because, as the president said way back in early August, the United States has, in a high-profile way, sent a message to hostages, their families and, importantly, hostage-takers that defies logic. Or as was put best, as it often is, by a United States senator from Arkansas named Tom Cotton, who if memory serves, knows a few things about the Middle East, war and the bad guys:
“We now know the extraordinary lengths to which the Obama administration went to ensure this payment happened . . . Unfortunately, it’s not just the American people who received confirmation. It’s also terrorist groups and our adversaries around the world who know the United States will pay cold, hard cash for hostages.”
The last few weeks, the distrustful, suspicious and cynical opposition party in Washington—and, boy, does it have reason to be—has been trying to decide whether to have hearings on the ransom payment that never really was. The news in the papers Friday surely has helped make that decision.