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Reader Says the Obama administration paid $400 million in ransom to save Hillary’s electoral bacon

sh-iraniancrisis

For centuries on end this was how the Muslim world and the West interacted. Literally, this was more or less the only mode of interaction. Muslim raiders descended upon a littoral Mediterranean town or village on the mainland of Europe or in England or Ireland and dragged their hostages to one or another Muslim city in North Africa.

Later, we would diligently pay the muslim captors to get as many of our people back as we could afford. For hundreds of years thus was business as usual. Western populations were weak and vulnerable to the depredations of a barbaric culture that was stuck in the 7th cenury, and there was no option but to endure the raids and pay the ransom demanded. If any hostage renounced the Christian faith to avoid the cruel treatment given to kaffirs or infidels, the Catholic Church, having limited funds for this purpose, would generally not pay for that person’s release, favoring instead those who had kept the faith. That was the price for apostasy at the time. There still exists some kind of Holy See office, largely dormant now, that conducted this hostage ransoming work. Those who were engaged in it were seen as doing the Lord’s work in saving souls from the grip of Satan. And that’s exactly what they were doing.

Now, the Obama administration didn’t pay 400 million in ransom for this laudable reason. No, it was vulnerable to heavy criticism from the likes of Donald Trump for abandoning the American hostages during the so-called nuclear negotiations and needed to save Hillary’s electoral bacon by eliminating the Iranian hostage situation as an issue during the presidential race. Humanitarian motivations played no part in the calculus.

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Americans held hostage in Iran in 1979-81 will each get $4.4M

sh-iraniancrisis

DECEMBER 24, 2015, 10:16 PM    LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2015, 10:22 PM
BY CAROL MORELLO AND FRANCES STEAD SELLERS
THE WASHINGTON POST |
WIRE SERVICE

Compensation for American Embassy personnel held hostage for 444 days in Iran more than three decades ago was hailed on Thursday by the former captives and the lawyers who for years fought Tehran and Washington to get a measure of vindication.

A provision buried in a spending bill signed by President Obama last week will give up to $4.4 million to each of the 37 surviving hostages or the estates of 16 others who died in the years since their release. The sum works out to $10,000 for each day of their captivity and will come, in part, from a $9 billion penalty paid by the French bank BNP Paribas for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

“Iran is not paying the money, but it’s as close as you can get,” said Thomas Lankford, an attorney who represented the former hostages and their families in a lengthy battle that continued even after the courts and the U.S. government repeatedly denied their requests for restitution. Lankford called the restitution “gratifying after a long, long time.”

The financial settlement also provides potential benefits for victims of other terrorist attacks, including the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa and for first responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/americans-held-hostage-in-iran-in-1979-81-will-each-get-4-4m-1.1480110

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Obama tries to shake off Jimmy Carter aura

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Iranian Hostage Crisis 

Obama tries to shake off Jimmy Carter aura

By Geoff Dyer in New York

Barack Obama’s first speech to the UN was filled with the giddy hopes that won him the presidency in the first place. “More than at any point in human history, the interests of nations and peoples are shared,” he told world leaders in 2009.

Five years later, it was a greyer and more sombre Mr Obama who warned the UN this week about the “generational task” of defeating Islamist militants in the Middle East, two days after he launched his first air strikes in Syria. “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force,” he said.

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Replete with George W Bush-style rhetoric about a “network of death” and “this brand of evil”, Mr Obama’s speech this week was an effort to reboot his flagging presidency.

In political terms, the more martial Mr Obama was trying to shake of the Jimmy Carter aura that has been hanging over his White House; the steady corrosion of leverage at home and influence abroad in the face of Middle East turmoil that slowly leaves an incumbent looking impotent.

https://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a09ee332-4598-11e4-9b71-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3EgyeJ6zn