When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
– George W. Bush
Interesting coincidence that a couple of days after watching Lord of War I ran across this article on the arrest of someone who, judging from the article, could well have been one of the models for Nicholas Cage’s Yuri Orlov:
In other words, the arrest of Kassar was a significant—not to mention brilliantly conceived and executed—victory in the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.” For some reason, however, the government didn’t go to the same lengths to publicize the arrest (nor did American media outlets trumpet it in their turn) the way it has the takedowns of homegrown would-be terror suspects who, with the prodding of government informants, allegedly fantasized about bringing down the Chicago Sears tower, or assaulting Fort Dix, or lighting gas mains like fuses in order to blow up the John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Perhaps that had something to do with what Garcia made clear in his remarks: that the U.S. government has been well aware of Kassar’s work on behalf of terrorists around the world since the 1970s. Kassar was allegedly up to his neck in the Iran-Contra scandal, the BCCI scandal, the murder of Achille Lauro passenger Leon Klinghoffer, and the supply of weapons that were in all likelihood used against American soldiers in the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia. Yet no American court had ever leveled formal charges against him, and he’d spent decades hiding in plain sight. “Most arms dealers of his caliber aren’t skulking in some shithole in Marseille,” says David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the British American Security Information Council. Isenberg has been tracking illicit arms dealers for almost 20 years. “He’s been on radar screens. With enough money, you can buy all the respect you need.”
– Chris Thompson in The Village Voice
See also:
There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?
– Yuri Orlov in Lord of War
