So if the Obama administration wasn’t alarmed by Flynn’s nonexistent ties to Russia, why was he Obama’s No. 1 target? Why were officials from the previous administration intercepting his phone calls with the Russian ambassador?
The answer is that Obama saw Flynn as a signal threat to his legacy, which was rooted in his July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Flynn had said long before he signed on with the Trump campaign that it was a catastrophe to realign American interests with those of a terror state. And now that the candidate he’d advised was the new president-elect, Flynn was in a position to help undo the deal. To stop Flynn, the outgoing White House ran the same offense it used to sell the Iran deal—they smeared Flynn through the press as an agent of a foreign power, spied on him, and leaked classified intercepts of his conversations to reliable echo chamber allies.
And one line of attack by the Obama administration was to divert the debate into pointless details:
One strategy employed by Rhodes’ echo chamber assets was to engage critics in esoteric debates over details of the Iran deal. For instance, how many centrifuges would Iranian reactors be allowed to spin? Had Iran’s supreme leader declared a genuine fatwa against nuclear weapons? Was this or that nuclear site a military facility?
Among the handful of honest reporters covering the deal, most didn’t have enough information, time, or energy to continue fighting a wall of static noise. And that was the point of Obama’s media campaign—to drown out, smear, and shut down opponents and even skeptics. Thus, echo chamber allies purposefully obscured the core issue.
I was not confused because well before the deal was signed I knew with absolute certainty what the deal would be:
I don't bother speculating on the potential details. The big picture has always been clear to me.
The Iranians will pretend not to have a nuclear weapons program; and we will pretend to believe them.
It was bad enough that Obama destroyed the Senate's treaty approval power to drag the deal across the finish line, lying to the country through the media and friendly think tanks--that echo chamber--in the process.
I just don't get how mullah-run Iran inspires such loyalty among some people.
Then the deal-inspired attack on rule of law went from the Senate to domestic spying and damaging our tradition of peaceful transfer of power.
People involved in this Obama administration plotting need some solid prison time. And any pardons need to be accompanied by truth and reconciliation commission-type public hearings about what the guilty parties did.
Or are we fine with banana republic intrigue in our federal government?
Tip to Instapundit.
