American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [69]
I sometimes get a strange sense of déjà vu, when I think of how the Obama Administration now wants to put all of Bush-II’s torture policies behind us.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?
We need to realize that the precedent-setter for one political party to steal a presidential election from another happened with Ronald Reagan, a man some would like to see join our greatest presidents on Mount Rushmore. Like the political assassinations earlier, this was a continuation of an ends-justify-the-means mentality that will ultimately destroy our democracy altogether if we allow this attitude to continue. Also, let’s consider how our “friends” so quickly become our “enemies.” Is it all about what suits certain people in power? Who’s really benefiting from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the demonization of Iran?
CHAPTER TEN
YOUR GOVERNMENT DEALING DRUGS
THE INCIDENT: The Iran-Contra scandal of 1986-88 involved members of the Reagan administration breaking an arms embargo and selling weapons to Iran, in order to secure the release of six U.S. hostages and to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
THE OFFICIAL WORD: Fourteen administration officials were charged with crimes, and eleven were convicted. Reagan eventually admitted “trading arms for hostages.”
MY TAKE: Congress covered up the fact that illegal drug deals were at the heart of the Iran-Contra story, just as the CIA has been deeply involved in drug trafficking for decades. It’s a situation that continues today in Mexico and Afghanistan, and the reality is that our economy is secretly deeply embedded in the global drug trade.
“But what’s important in this whole thing is that our policy has always been consistent . . .”
—Oliver North, interviewed on Frontline: The Drug Wars, PBS
One of the reasons I’m writing this book is because our country has such a short-term memory. How many of us recall that, as far back as 1972, a report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse recommended that possession of pot for personal use be decriminalized? And that was when Nixon was president! Later on, Jimmy Carter called for getting rid of penalties for small-time possession, but Congress stonewalled him. Since then, we’ve had another president (Clinton) who claimed he didn’t inhale and our latest (Obama) admitting he took some tokes back in the day. Federal law still considers marijuana a dangerous illegal drug, although fourteen states have now enacted laws allowing for some use for medical purposes.
Let me cite a few statistics that I find mind-boggling. According to NORML, an advocacy group for legalizing marijuana, more than 700,000 of America’s estimated 20 million pot-smokers got arrested in 2008. About half of the 200,000 inmates in our federal prisons are in there for drug-related offenses. Between 1970 and 2007, we saw a 547 percent increase in our prison population, mainly because of our drug policies. Of course, that’s just fine with the new prison-industrial complex, where corporations are now running the show. We as taxpayers shell out $68 billion every year for prisons, and a lot of that ends up going into private contractors’ pockets!1
Of course, they’re not the only ones getting rich. Well-documented reports by Congress and the Treasury Department lead to the conclusion that American banks are “collectively the world’s largest financial beneficiary of the drug trade.” Not including real estate transfers, there’s an estimated inflow of $250 billion a year coming into the country’s banks—which I suppose is welcomed by some as offsetting our $300-billion trade deficit.2
We’ll talk more about banks several times in this chapter, but I want to start with some history on our government’s involvement with drug traffic. You want to talk hypocrisy? This sordid saga takes the cake. We started using drug lords like Lucky Luciano to help fight the Communists back during World