Mug Shot
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a career officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel after 20 years of service. At present, he is a political pundit and
host of "War Stories with Oliver North" a show that appears on the Fox News Channel. He is also, a very odd and quirky character who has many
strange and very interesting if not ironic things to say lately.
Everything about Col. Oliver North is to say the least controversial including his Wikipedia entry which for some reason contains inaccuracies that on the face of it would seem to expose some entity or another as having a need to re-write history. Yet, noone seems to want to challenge them.
It is at this time that I would like to take this opportunity to ask the reader of this article if they perhaps remember the Republican candidates for President during the 2008 election season giving Senator Obama hell for holding onto his "wildly insane" position of wanting to talk to the leaders of the country of Iran "without preconditions"? This was a very very big issue at that time. At least for the republicans.
It turns out that none other than Lt. Col. Oliver North has a job as a journalist for the Fox News Channel. Part of his job is to provide commentary on how well the current president is doing. On the face of it, Mr. North does not see much that is worth praising in the Obama Administration. He wrote this commentary as part of a blog post:
"According to the U.S. government, I am an extremist. I am a Christian and meet regularly with other Christians to study God's word. My faith convinces me the prophecies in the Holy Bible are true. I believe in the sanctity of human life, oppose abortion, and want to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman. I am a veteran with skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. I own several firearms, and I frequently shoot them, buy ammunition, and consider efforts to infringe on my Second Amendment rights to be wrong and unconstitutional. I fervently support the sovereignty of the United States, and I am deeply concerned about our economy, increasingly higher taxes, illegal immigration, soaring unemployment, and actions by our government that will bury my children beneath a mountain of debt."
Ok, so we know that he like to go to church and that is a good thing. He also believes that the "prophecies in the Holy Bible are true". If he makes this claim I think that it would be fair and reasonable to ask anybody who takes this position if he believes in the "end of days" which is part of the biblical prophecies old testament style. If he does believe in the end of days then I would suggest that he would not be a good candiate for telling the rest of the world what is best for the United States national security-wise, because his religious beliefs clearly have him in a conflict of interest.
As a true believer in the prophecies it would be in his best interest do everything in his power to hasten the end of the world as we know it, and wouldn't you know it, he almost had his chance way back when he was working for the White House during in the early 1980's. In a very recent blog post on the Fox News Channel website, Mr. North said the following stuff about the current president:
"In Tehran, the ayatollahs ignored his utopian plea for "the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" and claim to have turned on 7,000 more centrifuges to refine uranium. Somali pirates "dissed" his "deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world" and hijacked an American-flagged vessel in the Gulf of Aden."
It goes on and on, but there is geniune irony in his words about Iran because...
Mr. North was involved in the secret sale of weapons to Iran to encourage the release of U.S. hostages and to support the Contra rebels of Nicaragua.
The press refers to this incident as the "Iran Contra Affair" (do Google it up). Mr. North was indicted on 16 felony counts and was convicted of three.
He was sentenced to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, given $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours of community service work.
Despite what Wikipedia states about his "charges being dismissed", his convictions were actually vacated by an appeals court later on, which I think
is something a little bit more than just splitting hairs.
How The Story Goes
In October and November of 1986, two secret U.S. Government operations were publicly exposed, potentially implicating the Ronald Reagan White House and officials in certain illegal activities: the provision of assistance to the military activities of Nicaraguan contra rebels during an October 1984 to October 1986 prohibition on such aid (Boland Amendment), and the sale of U.S. arms to Iran in contravention of stated U.S. policy (War Powres Act) and in possible violation of arms-export controls (think about this, secretly selling weapons to a country that we are currently afraid of and threaten to go to war with). In late November 1986, Reagan administration officials announced that some of the proceeds from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran had been diverted to the contras.
To be very clear about the matter it is important to understand that in 1982 The House of Representatives passed the "Defense Appropriations Act" and this bill was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on December 21, of that year. The bill contained an amendment that outlawed U.S. assistance to the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government something that republican presidents like to do a lot.
Col. North at that time worked for the National Security Counsel (NSC) and he was more or less in charge of running around and circumventing the spirit of the law on behalf of the president. When the scandal was exposed and Col. North had to testify in front of congress under oath, he did the honorable thing. He put on his military uniform (which he did not wear too much when toiling away at the NSC) raised his right hand in affirmation of his obligation to tell the whole truth, and he lied. He lied and lied, and lied so more. He lied to the American people in front of congress where if you and I were to lie in front of an American municpal court judge, we can risk going to jail for perjury. For his hard work as a dedicated servant to the White House, he is regarded as an American hero in certain quarters.
Immunity was extended to the Col. by the Select Committees that in 1987 investigated the Iran/contra matter. His nationally televised testimony under that grant of immunity guaranteed that nothing he told Congress could be used against him in an criminal proceeding, and this was the basis for his convictions (not charges) being vacated after the fact. Did it not occur to anybody at the time that commonly grants of immunity come with conditions? And that often these conditions include the obligation to tell the truth?
After an unsuccessful run for Governor of Virginia, Col. Oliver North has ended up on Fox News as a commentator where he sits in judgment of the President of the United States. In his judgment the president is making us less safe for his "soft stance" on Iran, which after all is part of the Axis of Evil, isn't it?
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