In March 2015, Joe Cirincione, president of a foundation called the Ploughshares Fund, was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered about the impending nuclear deal with Iran. "President Obama's political opponents try to block everything he does," he said. "But I think the center of the American security establishment is solidly behind the deal as it's been outlined." The interview was headlined on NPR's website, "Nuclear Experts Remain Optimistic About Iranian Negotiations."
Now that the Iranian deal has been finalized, so many discomfiting facts about the campaign to push it through a reluctant Congress have emerged that it's difficult to keep track of them all. The latest revelations, however, are especially startling. On May 20, the Associated Press reported that Cirincione's Ploughshares Fund apparently bought and paid for this favorable NPR coverage, giving the news outlet $100,000 last year and $700,000 in grants over a decade. Ploughshares also gave money to the Center for Public Integrity, which supports the influential nonprofit news outlet ProPublica, along with left-leaning publications such as Mother Jones and the Nation to beef-up their Iran coverage.
The AP's report, taken in conjunction with the revelations in a May 8 New York Times profile of Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, paint a disturbing picture of how the Iran deal was sold. No less than Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary under President Obama, told the Times that had Obama been honest about his intentions to empower Iran and disengage from the Middle East, Obama's national security team would have gotten "the [expletive] kicked out of them." To sell the deal, the White House worked with journalists and outside groups as part of a sophisticated and effective propaganda operation coordinated at the highest levels. Not coincidentally, an overwhelming number of these organizations working with the White House were also being funded by Ploughshares.
Do read it all. I just don't trust Cirincione and never have. This does not build my level of trust.
But this level of deception to sell the Iran deal explains my utter confusion at the lockstep of so-called experts on favor of what was self-evidently (to me) a bad deal.
And when I consider how--with the approval of their Left-wing fanboys (and girls)--the administration manipulated our media (however willingly they followed) for the goal of achieving a nuclear deal with a thug regime that works against us across the Middle East and which has plenty of American blood on its hands, I marvel at how our Left condemned as Ministry of Truth-level propaganda our military efforts to get true stories into the overseas local press to support victory in the Iraq War.
I guess what is acceptable just depends on whether you want to win a war or help a thug nation get nuclear weapons.
Have a super sparkly day.
