A Day for Love

THE ABSURD TIMES

illustration: THE GREAT LATUFF!

[Speaking of AIPAC, once we game special plaudits to him for coming in third in a list of anti-Semites compiled by some wannabe APAIC moron.  We can not remember who came in first and second, but he did beat of number four, which was "European Football Fans".  Now this in an amazing accomplishment.  Do you have and idea of how many European football fans there are?  Well, we've never counted, but there are millions, yes, there are millions.  This is am accomplishment anyone should be proud of.  It is overwhelming.  Our hats are off to the Great Latuff, loved by millions!]  

Has anything really changed? 

Well, about 40 new Democrats were elected and replaced 40 Republicans.  When you realize that this represents not only 40 more Democrat votes, but 40 less (pardon the expression) Republican votes, that amounts to an 80 vote difference.  In almost every case, this was facilitated by disgust at Donald Trump.  The recent income tax returns will add to the realization, finally, that he is not on their side.  Maybe more will wake up.

I understand big Don shut down the government.  He wants his wall.  He's gonna hold his breath until you give him his wall!  It is remarkably like a 3 year old, maybe a four year old?  I'm not all that sure anymore, but he really is acting like a spoiled child who had his lollipop taken away.  Anyway, doing that helped all those Democrats get elected, so that's fine.

This is a time to celebrate Valentine's Day, the anniversary of the Parkland mass shootings staunchly defended by the NRA.  We can also commemorate the Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago.  Also, now the 201^st anniversary of the birth of Frederick Douglass of whom big don said "He is doing some great things."  We can remember Abraham Lincoln having to escort him into the slave-built White House because he was black.  Yes, we do know how to remember Black History Month. 

Ilam Omar recently apologized for using anti-Semitic "Tropes."  [There were tropes and schemes, all terminology from Renaissance
Rhetoric, collectively called "figures", numbering between two and three hundred.  Beware of those evil Tropes.]  So, everybody thought that would shut her up, the young representative from Minnesota, but she was immediately introduced to Eliot Abrams, Trump's nominee to oversee Venezuela. 

Now I don't know if he is allowed to vote, this ex-con, as he was sent to prison for his role in Iran Contra, and then pardoned by George Bush the first, ex-CIA Director.  Ollie North, also of that scandal, is now spokesman for the NRA, which we all assume is celebrating Valentine's Day.  Eliot was behind the attempt to stage a coup of Chavez, but failed.  Now he has a head start, still to subvert Venezuela.  She said there is no reason to believe anything he says and Abrams attempted to B.S. her.  She said, "That was not a question."  So, she is still going.  

There is no point in arguing with (pardon the expression) Republicans or other such idiots.  Let us take, for example, the issue of climate change, or global warming which is causing climate change.  The issue is settled so far as fact, data, science, and reason is concerned.  There is no way around it.  However, it is refuted by a Senator, a (pardon the expression) Republican, bringing in a snowball to the Senate chamber.  See?  Or how about this: on February 2019, a remote from the island of Maui showed the streets covered with snow.  See?  No climate change.  There is really no point in discussing anything with this type of person. 

The problem we have had recently with this stupidity and lying is that nobody who is that sort of person (a Trump Supporter) reads this, and those who do have a brain and are reading it, already know it.  So what is the point?  It is much like discussing the second amendment with these idiots.  No, I'm not going to bother. 

 So now one of the new representatives (discussed above) pointed out that AIPAC spends a great deal of money on lobbying.  Of course, that was "anti-Semitic."  The same was said of Norm Finklestein whose mother had been in a concentration camp.  Alan Derschowitz went after him.  Alan now spends time on FOX News.  Really, this is tiring.

Well, recently, Trump said that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in the United States.  Actually, it never was.  Furthermore, its crime rate steadily decreased over the years until some border fence or something like that was build.  Then, the rate remained the same with no further declines.  There we go again, talking about facts. 

North Korea is not reducing its nuclear capabilities even though they said they were in favor of "de-nuclearizing" [what a disgusting trope] the Korean Peninsula.  One thing that has been overlooked – they meant the ENTIRE area, which would include all United States nukes as well.  Big Don wants just the North part taken care of.  You know, the Libyan model as the psychopath Bolton proclaimed. 

Sarah Huckabee, the press secretary, announced that "God wants Trump to be President."  If this is really that case, God has a great deal to answer for, especially since the Southern Baptist Church has now been revealed to have dealt in sexual child abuse on a grand scale and forcing abortions in some cases (who says the Catholic Church has the most fun?).  Maybe if we built a wall around the Baptist churches things would be better?  

Let us not forget Venezuela.  It turns out that a group that used to work with the CIA during the Bush administrations, also Reagan, has been flying arms to Venezuela.  It is a bit tiring to repeat the whole Iran Contra episode that eventually led to Ollie North being spokesman from the NRA and it's not worth it here.  Suffice to say that the same shit is going on now.  You may have heard all the major networks weeping over the "humanitarian" aid we sent to aid our puppet, but little about how the United Nations has condemned that action.  People are not hungry in Venezuela because of "Socialism," but because of our blockade of trade and appropriation of funds from the country.  You might as well know that.  It seems that the ex-CEO of Starbucks is also afraid of Socialism.  Too many voters now never lived though all the "socialism" scares our governments used as the USSR no longer exists. 

Anyway, I was going to simply publish this as it is, above, but it turns out by happy coincidence that Amy Goodman has an interview that should redeem the CIA in the minds of many.  Here it follows.

Bye

A North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to Venezuela following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they had uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela's third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11, the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA's rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. We speak to McClatchy reporter Tim Johnson, who broke the story. Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Venezuela. A North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to that country following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela's third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11th, which is the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. Bolivarian National Guard General Endes Palencia Ortiz said, "This materiel was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States."

AMY GOODMAN: 21 Air has denied knowledge of the arms shipment, saying the flight had been chartered by another company called GPS-Air, which also denied sending arms. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA's rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. In 2006, Amnesty International identified Gemini as a front company that had authorization to land on U.S. military bases worldwide.

The CIA has a long history of running front companies for covert actions. Most famously, the CIA ran a front airline called Air America, which operated from 1950 to 1976. In the '80s, a CIA front company called Southern Air Transport was used to send arms to the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua.

We're joined now by Tim Johnson, who has been reporting on the storyfor McClatchy, joining us from Pennsylvania.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Tim, would you lay out what you found?

TIM JOHNSON: Well, as you mentioned, this air charter company, 21 Air, went repeatedly to places in Venezuela and Colombia starting January 11th. Prior to that, it had largely operated domestically, and suddenly it began to change its patterns. And often there would be even two flights a day between Miami and places in Colombia or Venezuela.

I actually learned about this from somebody who tweeted about it. A gentleman in Canada who follows ship and plane movements noticed this, and we started looking into the history of the chairman of 21 Air and saw that he has a number of businesses. And two of those businesses used an address in northwest Miami that were previously used by a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, which, as you mentioned, was listed in that Amnesty International report as having participated in renditions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Tim Johnson, a Boeing 767 is a pretty big plane, and the cache of weapons that the Venezuelan government claims they found, while they're clearly lethal weapons, is not a huge shipment. I'm wondering: Do you have any way of being able to tell what the manifest of this flight, as well as the other 39 or so flights that this airline engaged in—what they were claiming to hold?

TIM JOHNSON: I actually don't know. We've tried to get that, and we haven't been able to get the manifests yet. So, you know, what was aboard the other flights going to South America, we don't know. This is a very puzzling case. If you look on social media and dig into the backgrounds of employees of 21 Air and associated companies, you see that there are many accounts of employees who follow the Venezuelan opposition, and opposition accounts that follow them, as well. So, there's certainly some sympathy from employees within the company to the opposition to Maduro in Venezuela.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the leadership of the company that you investigated, based in North Carolina. And explain what you mean when you talk about the links to rendition under President George W. Bush.

TIM JOHNSON: Well, Adolfo Moreno is a 75 percent owner of 21 Air, and he's got many other companies, but he's been involved out of Miami. I don't know—while the company is registered in North Carolina, the operations really are out of Miami, as far as I can tell. That's where many of the flights have been operated. They have a huge operation center at Miami International Airport.

A curious secondary aspect of this story is that the company that consigned the cargo also has tangential links to, you know, this historical—the Iran-Contra affair. The head of GPS Air is a man named José Manuel Calvo, and he, like Moreno, has many companies. And one of those companies, with the partner that he used to create this company, is a company called Heavylift Air. And that company has a subsidiary out of the UAE that is controlled by in Iranian American named Farhad Azima, who also had a role in Iran-Contra. So there's all these circumstantial things, but there's really no smoking gun, that I could tell. You know, this may be just circumstantial.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you reporting this new now on Iran-Contra, what you're saying? And explain, for people who aren't familiar with the Iran-Contra scandal, this happening under the Reagan-Bush years, the selling of weapons to Iran to take that money to support the Contras in Nicaragua, which violated U.S. law, the Boland Amendment.

TIM JOHNSON: Yes. So, that scandal involved Southern Air Transport, which also was a CIA front company. That really exploded into the news back in 1986 because the Sandinista army shot down a twin-engine plane that was run by Southern Air Transport, that was taking armaments to the Contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua. So, Southern Air Transport was actually heavily involved in all the arms shipments to Iran and from the Middle East to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to ask you about Eugene Hasenfus, who you mention in your article. In 1986, he was aboard a U.S. plane that was shot down in Nicaragua while on a secret mission to bring arms to the Nicaraguan Contras. He the only passenger to survive. I want to turn to a documentary made by Wisconsin Public Television called the The Eugene Hasenfus Story from 1991. It featured an excerpt from the station's initial coverage of what happened to him in 1986.

REPORTER: A Wisconsin man has been the focus of international news this week. Forty-five-year-old Eugene Hasenfus of Marinette was captured in Nicaragua after his cargo plane was shot down. At a press conference Thursday, Hasenfus said his mission was directed by the CIA. But U.S. officials say the flights were privately directed. Mrs. Sally Hasenfus joined her husband in Nicaragua this week. Hasenfus has been jailed and may stand trial.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The documentary also featured an interview with Eugene Hasenfus's wife, Sally.

SALLY HASENFUS: The next morning, I tried to call President Reagan. I thought, "Well, it's the only place I'm going to get answers." He's—you know, I should be able to trust him. He's the president. And I knew he knew. He put me in touch with a man named Elliott Abrams. He said, "I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you're talking about." I got angry. And before I hung up, he did admit that he knew what I was talking about. And he kept warning me that—you know, "Be careful of the press, and be careful what you say. Be careful what you do."

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And interestingly or coincidentally, Elliott Abrams is now the special envoy of the White House to Venezuela. I'm wondering your assessment of this affair back then, the impact it had on what was going on at the time, in terms of the war on the Contras?

TIM JOHNSON: I'm not sure I can really speak to the historical impact. But, of course, it—you know, I think it helped lead to a negotiated settlement, leading to the elections in Nicaragua in 1990, because it was, you know, clearly a major impact on that. But I really couldn't speak further to that.

AMY GOODMAN: But this whole issue of Eugene Hasenfus, this former marine, a mercenary, shot down over Nicaragua, then held by Nicaragua, eventually released, and his contact with the U.S. government at the time, and now you raising this issue in your current piece around the arms shipment that was found going into Venezuela—not clear exactly if there's a connection to the U.S. government, but clearly the U.S. government is very overtly supporting the attempted overthrow of Maduro, explicitly, and these flights starting a day after Maduro's inauguration on January 10th.

TIM JOHNSON: Well, yes, there's a lot of these coincidental links, and it's worth paying quite close attention to. Again, I use "coincidental" only because we don't really know. You know, other people point out to me that there are many people that could have a vested interest in this, whether the arms were really aboard that plane. Or, is it possible that this was something that was ginned up by the Venezuelan government to rally support for Maduro? I don't know. I just—we haven't been able to determine for a fact that those weapons were loaded aboard that 767 in Miami, that somehow they passed through the normally rigorous screening by TSA for air cargo. These are things that are just yet to be investigated.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And has the company answered in terms of—as you mentioned, they normally were not traveling to Venezuela and Colombia—the 40 flights, what they were actually carrying, or are they saying they just didn't know?

TIM JOHNSON: Both have been very limited in what they've said, other than denying that they knew what the cargo was. Generally, an air charter company would trust the consignee of the freight to handle any declarations, I believe. And for its part, GPS-Air said, well, it was—you know, it doesn't know what was in the cargo.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, back to that issue of rendition, though you don't know exactly who this company was working for, what you do have a record of is the company being involved with the U.S. government during the President George W. Bush years, being involved with rendition and having clearance to land on any military base in the world. Can you explain what those renditions, so-called, what some called kidnappings, were about?

TIM JOHNSON: Well, basically, the renditions were to take terrorist suspects, following 9/11, for interrogation in black site jails scattered around the world. There were a number of them in Eastern Europe. I know there was one outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand, elsewhere. And these were used to, you know, forcefully interrogate, waterboard even, suspects in the war against terror. So these rendition flights were commonly used in the period after 9/11.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Tim Johnson, McClatchy reporter who's been covering national security and technology issues since 2016, his recent article headlined "Venezuela says plane from Miami delivered weapons for use by enemies of Maduro." Tim Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers. Earlier in his career, he spent two decades as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America. We'll link to your piece at democracynow.org.

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George SR.

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration:  A popularly elected leader of Chile murdered on 9/11

We have been hearing nothing but maudlin nostalgia for Bush I, and it is only the idiocy and blatant foolery of Donald Trump who twitters things away like a madman that he looks good. It dominates our news and nothing else gets through.  One must look even to the BBC, let alone RT, France24, and other international services to find out what is going on.  Below we have a reporter from Al-Jazerra, a mid-eastern service that Bush I and then Bush II bombed.  Quatar, which hosts the station, is boycotted by Saudi Arabia -- It tried to work in the U.S., but finally had to close up.

Back to Bush I.  The truth is that his perfidry is greatly underestimated.  He started as head of the CIA, his father was head of the OSS (the ancestor of the CIA) and all along he maintained the same underground self-importance and greed of the "old elite" classes, the bulwark of greed and aggression of the U.S.  During the Iran-Contra dealings he claimed he was "out of the loop" when he may very well have been the loop itself.  He was instrumental in setting up the Bay of Pigs fiasco for which the Kennedy administration is still blamed (although Dulles had set it up).  Right after that, JFK fired Alan Dulles, then the CIA director and a year later. Almost to the day, JFK was eliminated.  He was there when Alliende was overthrown by Kissinger and the CIA and much more to overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome", (which is another word for a free press).  He finally managed to pretty much wipe it out with Panama, but his real work was done in Iraq.  The Mideast is still in turmoil as a result.  Others who followed him merely improvised on it, until his son managed to wipe out the entire thing.  Then the fall of Gaddafi in Libya contributed, leading to the immigration crisis in Europe and to the various citizens turning to a populist form of fascism – which is how Hitler started and now Trump has made well known.

There is more evidence than provided below, but here it is for a start:

George H.W. Bush died in Houston on Friday night at the age of 94. Bush was elected the 41st president of the United States in 1988, becoming the first and only former CIA director to lead the country. He served as Ronald Reagan's vice president from 1981 to 1989. Since Bush's death, the media has honored the former president by focusing on his years of service and his call as president for a kinder, gentler America. But the headlines have largely glossed over and ignored other parts of Bush's legacy. We look at the 1991 Gulf War, Bush's pardoning of six Reagan officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and how a racist election ad helped him become president. We speak with Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan. His latest piece is titled "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice."

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to look at the life and legacy of George H.W. Bush, the nation's 41st president, the father of the 43rd president. President Bush died in Houston on Friday night at the age of 94. His body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from tonight until Wednesday. He'll be buried later this week in Houston. There will be two memorial services: one at the National Cathedral on Wednesday and then one in Houston. Bush was elected president in 1988, becoming the first and only former CIA director to lead the country. From 1981 to 1989, he served as Ronald Reagan's vice president.

Over the weekend, the media honored Bush and his legacy, focusing on Bush's years of service, from his time in the Navy during World War II to his call as president for a kinder, gentler America. But the focus of the media's coverage has largely glossed over, or even ignored, other parts of Bush's legacy, from his expansion of the racist so-called war on drugs to his reluctance to tackle climate change, famously saying, quote, "The American way of life is not up for negotiation," unquote. It was also George H.W. Bush who nominated and continued supporting future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas even after Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. Internationally, the ramifications of Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East are still being felt. In 1991, Bush launched the Gulf War in Iraq.

PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Our objectives are clear: Saddam Hussein's forces will leave Kuwait, will be restored to its rightful place, and Kuwait will once again the free. Iraq will eventually comply with all relevant United Nations resolutions. And then, when peace is restored, it is our hope that Iraq will live as a peaceful and cooperative member of the family of nations, thus enhancing the security and stability of the Gulf. Some may ask, "Why act now? Why not wait?" The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer.

AMY GOODMAN: Over the next 42 days, U.S. forces devastated the Iraqi civilian infrastructure and killed an unknown number of Iraqi civilians. On February 13, 1991, the U.S. bombed an air-raid shelter in the Amiriyah neighborhood of Baghdad. Four hundred eight civilians were killed. Some Iraqi relatives of the dead later sued Bush and his defense secretary, Dick Cheney, for war crimes. While the Gulf War technically ended in February of 1991, the U.S. war on Iraq would continue for decades, first in the form of devastating sanctions, then in the 2003 invasion launched by George H.W. Bush's son, President George W. Bush, the 43rd president. Thousands of U.S. troops and contractors remain in Iraq today.

President Bush's invasion of Iraq came just over a year after he sent tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of aircraft into Panama to execute an arrest warrant against its leader, Manuel Noriega, on charges of drug trafficking. General Noriega was once a close ally to Washington and on the CIA payroll. During the attack, the U.S. unleashed a force of 24,000 troops equipped with highly sophisticated weaponry and aircraft against a country with an army smaller than the New York City Police Department. An estimated 3,000 Panamanians died in the attack. Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Washington to pay reparations to Panama over what was widely seen as an illegal invasion.

In one of his last acts in office, President George H.W. Bush granted pardons to six former Reagan officials who were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, when the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran to help raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras despite a congressional ban on providing aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. Bush was never held liable for his role in the scandal. The ex-CIA director claimed he was, quote, "out of the loop," even though other participants and a paper trail suggested otherwise.

Bush's time in office coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. He termed the post-Soviet era the New World Order and was a key architect of neoliberal globalization, setting the stage for, among other things, NAFTA and the WTO.

To talk more about the legacy of George H.W. Bush, we're joined by Mehdi Hasan. He's a columnist for The Intercept, host of their Deconstructed podcast. He's also host of UpFront at Al Jazeera English. His most recent piece for The Intercept, "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice."

Mehdi, we want to thank you for being with us. Of course, when someone dies, people—and certainly in the media, when it comes to a U.S. leader—they focus on what they feel was the important praiseworthy accomplishments of a person. And it's the instinct of all not to speak ill of the dead. But, Mehdi Hasan, if you can talk about the significance of the presidency of George H.W. Bush?

MEHDI HASAN: I mean, huge significance, Amy. And you're right. You know, not speaking ill of the dead is true, and it's a basic—you know, basic courtesy and decency. But this is not about speaking ill of the dead. This is about evaluating the record of a president of the United States, the 41st president of the United States, and one of the most important human beings of the 20th century, technically.

And, yes, a lot happened on his, you know, 4-year watch. You mentioned a great deal of it in your introduction there. And I think the problem is—I find it astonishing, as a Briton living in Washington, D.C., watching cable news on Saturday and seeing this hagiography masquerading as journalism, just talking about what a great guy he was, what a great president he was, what a civil and decent human being he was, ending the Cold War, and many achievements. You know, he stood up to the NRA. He stood up to AIPAC. He did do some good things. But the idea that you only focus on the positive and you ignore the negatives, especially when the negatives involve the loss of huge amounts of human life—in Iraq, for example, in Panama—I think, is absurd. It's a dereliction of journalistic duty for a president to die and journalists to act as if they're cheerleaders and put, you know, their own, whatever, patriotism or nationalism ahead of their duty to really give a full set of facts to the viewers, you know, a first draft of history, Amy.

A president is dead. We should look back on George Bush Sr. and say, "Hold on." You know, this is a president who is being described now as the anti-Trump, right? And yet he did some things which were similar to Trump. You mentioned in your intro the pardoning of the Iran-Contra perpetrators. He pardoned Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on the eve of his trial. And the independent special counsel at that time—the independent special counsel at that time said this was misconduct. He said this was helping cover up the crimes. And today we get all worked up when Trump says, "Oh, I might pardon Paul Manafort." I think we should hold him to the same account we hold other people. The fact that, you know, he was nicer than Trump or less aggressive than his son doesn't change the fact that he has a lot to answer for.

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, and then we're going to come back and look at his record, from the Iraq War to the so-called war on drugs, the Willie Horton ad that became so famous, that one of his top aides, Lee Atwater, who really devised the scheme, apologized for on his deathbed. Mehdi Hasan is a columnist for The Intercept. We'll be back with him in a moment.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: "Rockin' in the Free World," Neil Young. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Mehdi Hasan is our guest, a columnist for The Intercept, host of the Deconstructed podcast, also is host of UpFront for Al Jazeera English. You mentioned the Iran-Contra scandal. If you can explain what the Iran-Contra scandal was?

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. So, in the 1980s, there was congressional ban on the United States government supporting the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, which were trying to bring down a communist government in South America. And you had this issue where the Reagan administration decided to sell weapons to Iran, which was supposedly an enemy country at that time, fighting Iraq, and use the proceeds from that money to fund the Contras, in violation of a congressional ban.

There was a massive investigation. It was a huge scandal—think Russiagate times 10—at the time, in the 1980s. Reagan obviously left office without being punished for it. There was a special counsel, Bob Mueller-style, which was tasked to look into this: Lawrence Walsh, a former deputy attorney general under Eisenhower, I think it was. And when he tried to look into this, he found resistance from Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush. We're now being told what an honest and transparent man he was; he followed the rule of law, unlike Donald Trump today. And yet, at the time, he refused to hand over his diary. He refused to cooperate with the special counsel. He refused to give an interview. Sounds familiar, doesn't it, Amy? And then he pardoned the six top perpetrators—Elliott Abrams, the neocon; Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's defense secretary.

And the special counsel report, which is online—you can go and look at it now—very, very clearly says that Bush helped perpetrate the cover-up. Bush did not cooperate. And he says, I think, it's the first time a president pardoned someone on the eve of a trial that the president would have had to testify in. That's what Bush Sr. did. So when we're told today, "Oh, look at the difference between George Bush Sr. and Donald Trump," well, when it comes to obstruction of justice, when it comes to cover-ups, actually they were more similar than some of the media and some of the journalists would have you believe.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's turn to the Gulf War. In January of 1991, George H.W. Bush addressed the nation on the invasion of Iraq.

PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: As I report to you, air attacks are underway against military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb potential. … Some may ask, "Why act now? Why not wait?" The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer.

AMY GOODMAN: That's President George H.W. Bush in January of 1991. Of course, flags were at half-mast in Washington this weekend, as they were in Kuwait. Mehdi Hasan, you remind us of a very important part of the story, the lead-up to what took place and how it was the U.S. responded the way they did to Iraq and Kuwait.

MEHDI HASAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell that story.

MEHDI HASAN: So, you heard the statement from George Bush Sr. Look, let's be very clear. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait illegally, in violation of international law. It was a brutal occupation of Kuwait. No one is denying any of that. But what Bush Sr. told the country was that this came without any warning, without any provocation, when in actual fact his own ambassador at that time in Iraq, the U.S. ambassador, April Glaspie, had told Saddam, just weeks before the invasion, that we in America have no opinion on your border dispute with Kuwait. It was interpreted as a green light. Historians—many historians have suggested that was a green light to Saddam from the Bush administration to invade. After Saddam invaded, we were also told by Bush Sr. that America had to go in to protect Saudi Arabia, because that was coming next. Saddam was about to invade Saudi, as well. There were Iraqi troops massing on the border. In fact, one reporter—I think her name is Jean Heller, if I remember correctly—went and bought some private commercial satellite data and found there were no Iraqi troops massing on the border to invade Saudi Arabia. It was another lie, like his son told in the run-up to the 2003 invasion. So, it was a war built on half-truths, evasions, lies. No one is denying Saddam invaded. But what George Bush told the nation was not the full truth.

And even after he went to war, as you mentioned in your introduction, how many civilians were killed? The United States government bombed an air-raid shelter in Baghdad, the Amiriyah shelter, killed more than 400 civilians. Human Rights Watch called it a serious violation of the laws of war, because the U.S. knew—the U.S. had been told beforehand—the U.S. intel knew that that was a place where civilians were congregating. They didn't just bomb an air-raid shelter, Amy. They bombed power stations, electricity-generating facilities, food-processing plants, flour mills—the civilian infrastructure of Iraq. And this was not collateral damage. Planners from the United States government told The Washington Post, told Barton Gellman, in 1991, that they were doing this on purpose so that they would have leverage with a postwar Iraq which would be forced to supplicate in the international arena for foreign assistance. And we know what happened next, with the sanctions, with the devastation that came in the '90s and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids who died. That all started on George Bush Sr.'s watch.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to go back to the election of George H.W. Bush.

MEHDI HASAN: Oh, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: During his 1988 presidential bid, his campaign released a now-notorious television ad called "Weekend Passes."

NATIONAL SECURITY PAC AD: Bush and Dukakis on crime. Bush supports the death penalty for first-degree murderers. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes: Dukakis on crime.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the ad that Lee Atwater—Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, top aides to George Bush at the time—

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —would apologize for on his deathbed. Explain how significant this was.

MEHDI HASAN: Hugely significant, Amy. And even today, in media journalism classes across the country, that ad is taught, that ad is studied. Until Donald Trump came along, until the migrant caravan ad came along, it was considered to be the most racist ad in modern American political history. It was the 1988 election, and George Bush Sr. and his team decided that they were going to tie Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts liberal, to this black rapist who had been released on a weekend furlough program. I think Atwater—there's a quote from Atwater where he said, "We're going to talk about Willie Horton so much that people are going to think he's Michael Dukakis's running mate." And this was—Bush Sr. approved of this campaign ad. Bush Sr. talked about Willie Horton in press conferences.

And he never apologized. He never—you know, Atwater, on his deathbed, apologized. Bush Sr. never apologized. Roger Stone, Amy, one of the most vile political operatives of our time, close adviser to Donald Trump, former adviser to Richard Nixon, he went up to Atwater and the Bush campaign and said, "You will regret this, because this is a clearly racist ad." When Roger Stone is telling you that you're too racist, you know you've gone too far. And yet, on Saturday, on Sunday, I heard former Bush aides and advisers going on cable news saying, "He was a thoroughly decent man. He believed in civility. He didn't believe in rancor. He wanted, you know, to unify Americans." And I have two words in response to that: "Willie Horton."

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, as you quote, Lee Atwater bragged at the time, "By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis's running mate."

MEHDI HASAN: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: And he was talking about a policy that was actually a law in a number of states—

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —including California.

MEHDI HASAN: Yes, indeed. I think Reagan had signed off on a similar thing, if I'm not correct. But, you know, it was a deliberate attempt to stoke racial division, to scare white voters into thinking that Michael Dukakis was going to release a bunch of black murderers and rapists who were going to come and kill and rape them. It was vicious. And even recently, Amy, what's so ironic is the same cable news hosts who have been kind of, you know, praising George Bush Sr. to the hilt since Saturday morning, a few weeks ago they were all referring to Willie Horton when they were condemning Donald Trump's migrant caravan ad, you know, the ad that came out during the midterms about the Democrats let in this murderer, cop killer. We were all reminded of Willie Horton back then, but it seems like we won't make the logical collection which says that Willie Horton, that ad, came from the Bush Sr. campaign, this guy who was supposed to be a throwback to an era of civility and decency, yet he had no problem running this racist election campaign. Nor did he have a problem escalating a racist drug war.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about that drug war and what George H.W. Bush did, especially around the issue of crack.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. So, he sat in the White House, in the Oval Office, in 1989, and he held up a bag of crack cocaine, which he said, famously, "Well, this was found just outside the White House, in a park across from the White House. That's how bad the drug problem is." It was a great dramatic visual prop. And yet, we discovered, thanks to reporting from The Washington Post, that that drug dealer, the drug seller, had been arrested by federal agents, yes, in Lafayette Square, but he had been "lured" there, to quote The Washington Post, by those federal agents. He was told to come and sell his—by an undercover operative. And he's even heard on tape, I believe, saying, "Well, where is the White House? What's the address? I have no idea how to get there."

This was—I mean, this is pure cynicism, Amy, to use this prop in this fake stunt basically to mislead the nation, from this supposedly honest Republican president, which then led to a $1.5 billion increase in spending, which is what Bush Sr. called for. He called for more prosecutors, more jails, more prison, more courts. And we know how that story ends, Amy: mass incarceration, the imprisonment, disproportionately, of young black men, lives lost, thousands of innocent lives lost in the so-called drug war both at home and abroad. And today you have people like Rand Paul, a Republican senator, who will admit, Republican senators who will admit—Chris Christie—will say this was a failed and racist drug war.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Mehdi Hasan, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist for The Intercept, host of the Deconstructed podcast. Most recent piece for The Intercept, we'll link to, "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice." Tomorrow we'll look at what happened in Panama, George H.W. Bush's invasion of Panama, and the thousands of people who died there, as this week we continue to honor the dead.

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