Tuesday, January 8, 2019

DROWNING IN DEBT - AMERICA'S ENDLESS WARS OVER THERE AND OPEN UNDEFENDED BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX

The Ruling Class Redefines Character for Donald Trump



The Democrats, the media and the NeverTrump Republicans have thus far been unable to marginalize Donald Trump, despite utilizing the tried-and-true tactic of incessantly fomenting faux scandals directed at a sitting Republican president.  Further, and unique to Trump, the appointment of a dogged and nakedly partisan special counsel within the first five months of his presidency has failed to produce any evidence of criminal wrongdoing or Russian collusion.
Thus, the NeverTrump faction of the nation’s elites have now adopted a new strategy:  bemoaning his lack of “character and civility” as the basis of claiming that Trump is the worst President in American history and thus should either resign or, at the least, not seek or be re-elected.
Their definition of “character and civility,” as it applies to this President, revolves around his lack of sophistication and erudition, his speech patterns and temperament, his incessant use of social media as well as assigning crude nicknames to his opponents, and lastly, his insistence on being who he really is and not hiding behind a conventional political façade.  His tenacity in opposing the Left and their nation destroying agenda and empathy with and concern for the common man is discounted and demeaned.
How has mankind fared over the past one hundred years when men of character and civility acceptable to todays self-styled elites oversaw the fate of their nations?
The First World War mercifully came to an end on November 11, 1918.   It was a war that could have been easily avoided if the leaders of Britain, France, Austria-Hungary and Germany had chosen to search for a political solution instead of rushing head first into a war they secretly desired.  The leaders of these nations were all men who were articulate, sophisticated, and well-educated but none had any empathy for those they were about to send into the charnel house that was World War I.
 Fifty million people died or were wounded during the four years of the war (14 million military deaths and 13 million civilian deaths).  Additionally, this avoidable fiasco set the stage for a blood-soaked century littered with the bodies of over 120 million men, women and children.
Germany of the 1920’s turned to its men of character and civility in an effort to rebuild and institute a Democracy.  They failed miserably as they did not understand nor were willing to face down the growing radical ideology in their nation or demand and negotiate relief from the stringent conditions imposed on the nation by their former foes in the war.  Among those on the left was Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Workers Party.
In 1933, the Nazi Party was still in the minority in the Reichstag; however, Franz von Papen (Chancellor) and Paul von Hindenburg (President) offered Hitler the Chancellorship in the belief that he was a political neophyte and could be easily controlled.  Both von Papen and von Hindenburg were men of sterling character and civility as defined by today’s standard; nonetheless they had no core convictions or determination to understand and counter the threat of the radicals and no empathy with the average German citizen.  Hitler assumed dictatorial power within a year.
In 1936, in direct violation of the Versailles and Locarno treaties, Hitler, with a shell of a military, unilaterally marched into the Rhineland.  The governments of France and Great Britain, both of whom were staffed by men of impeccable refinement and education, stood idly by believing Hitler would surely be satisfied with just reclaiming this German speaking region.   They did nothing when just the threat of action would have deterred Hitler.
In 1938, France and its Prime Minister Edouard Daladier and Great Britain and its Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact believing Hitler could be trusted to abide by its terms. 
Chamberlain arrives in Munich 1938
Photo credit: German Federal Archive


This treaty betrayed and sealed the fate of an independent sovereign nation-- Czechoslovakia.  Within a year Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began.   Both of these clueless gentlemen would have been feted as men of character and civility by the current NeverTrump cabal.
World War II, with its roots in the First World War and abetted by the naivete and arrogance of the men of “character and civility” produced nearly 100 million casualties (23 million military deaths and 42 million civilian deaths) as well as over 20 million displaced persons in Europe alone.
In the United States since the 1960’s, the American elites who, unlike Trump, meet the character criteria set forth in 2019 have achieved the following:
  • South Vietnam was a corrupt supposed democratic nation essentially created out of whole cloth by the elites in the West.  When North Vietnam began to militarily reunite the two nations, the men of refinement and good manners in the United States decided to intervene.  From 1965-1973 there were over 155,000 American casualties (58,000 deaths) as well as 360,000 Vietnamese civilian deaths.  The financial cost: $4.0 Trillion (2018 dollars).  Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese won.  Further, this debacle unleashed not only riots and protests but mainstreamed and legitimized the radical American Left allowing them to aggressively infiltrate the entertainment, media and education establishments.
  • The war in Afghanistan began as a response to September 11, 2001; however, it and the invasion of Iraq quickly metastasized into a determination to impose democracy on two populations with no history, desire or understanding of democracy.  Those wars (Iraq-- 7 years and Afghanistan--17 years) have to date resulted in 57,000 American casualties (7,000 deaths) and cost $6.0 Trillion.  Further, civilian deaths exceed 300,000.  The primary accomplishment of this naivete is a more destabilized region, which created ISIS, emboldened Iran and fomented a civil war in Syria.
  • The overall national debt (including state, federal and local) in 1960 was $3.0 Trillion (2018 dollars) today it is $27.1 Trillion,  a nearly tenfold increase in less than sixty years. That makes the United States, with 5% of the world’s population, the largest debtor nation in history, currently accounting for 30% of all global national debt.  The wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan account for $10 Trillion (or 42%) of the growth in the overall national debt.  The balance is reflective of the incessant march toward evolving into Euro-socialist and potentially bankrupt nation.
The ever-naïve moral betters have been for decades wallowing in their refinement, erudition and civility.  Choosing to be oblivious to a more radicalized American Left assuming de facto control of the Democratic Party and the bulk of the mainstream media as well as virtually all social media platforms.   Today college campuses resemble mini-totalitarian states with virtually no freedom of speech or assembly.   Left-wing political harassment is rampant.  Unfounded accusations of racism and a myriad of other mythological isms are increasingly used to silence and intimidate.  And a concerted effort is well underway to completely undermine and overturn the Judeo-Christian foundation upon which this nation was founded.
I am among those who were categorized as a casualty of World War II and its aftermath as well as a displaced orphan fortunate to be brought to the United States under the terms of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948.  I have experienced first-hand the end-product of failed political and societal leaders who were men of “character and civility”.   
Thus, I am convinced the most important factors in political leadership in the United States today is first, compassion for and a true understanding of the day-to-day lives of the common man, second, the ability and willingness to comprehend the dangers of the left and their determination to transform the country and, third, unshakable tenacity to confront the opposition and willingly suffer their slings and arrows.  Donald Trump, despite his litany of personal flaws, possesses these characteristics.  All the other elements of character as promulgated by the AntiTrump media army, while important, pale by comparison considering the current state of affairs in this nation.
If I had a choice of a composite President, he would have the honor and integrity of Dwight Eisenhower, the conviction and communication skills of Ronald Reagan, the decency of George H.W. Bush and the empathy and tenacity of Donald Trump.  But that man or woman will never exist. 
Apparently, the passengers and crew of the S.S. NeverTrump, who self-identify as conservatives, would rather have as president any of the failed leaders of the past 100 years who pass their “character” litmus test.  Donald Trump has governed as the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan.  As long as he continues to do so while tenaciously fighting the left and the Democrats on behalf of the American people, then their and the media’s hackneyed assessment of his “character” will ring hollow and self-serving to the bulk of the American people.

"The southern U.S. border remains mostly unprotected while Democrats remain determined to prevent building the border wall.  Meanwhile, cocaine continues to flow into the United States, smuggled in partly by the Hezb'allah terrorist organization.  The drug epidemic has cost a great number of lives, and the federal government must stop the flow of drugs by building a border wall, and by using new technologies to detect intrusion into the U.S. ROVVY LEPOR

29 Facts About the Border and Mexican Cartels You Need to Know





A Border Patrol Jeep at the Tecate Port of Entry
Breitbart/Brandon Darby
7:51
As the debate about the construction of a wall and other border security issues, here are 29 facts that you need to know. The topics came up during the most recent episode of “Coffee with Scott Adams.” Brandon Darby, the Managing Editor for Breitbart’s Border and Cartel Chronicles, sat down with the famed creator of the Dilbert comics to discuss the intricacies of border security.



1) No one is proposing a wall between all of Mexico and the U.S.—the U.S. southern border is approximately 2,000 miles. The discussion is about 1,000 miles of physical barriers in regions that are heavily controlled by drug cartels.
2) The Texas border is about 1,200 miles of the approximately 2,000 miles of the total southern border. Most of that border is the Rio Grande, a river which varies in intensity with respect to currents.
3) Mexico has numerous states under the direct influence of drug cartels that have standing armies with access to RPGs, armored vehicles, artillery, and explosives. Most of Mexico has military forces patrolling streets to deal with cartel paramilitary forces.
4) The most violent drug cartels operate south of the Texas border. Factions of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel routinely allow their violence to spill over to the average person.
5) The border city of Tijuana has some of the highest murder statistics in all of Mexico. Despite record-setting figures, most of the victims tend to be tied to drug trafficking.
6) Border cities south of Texas like Reynosa, Tamaulipas, have much lower murder rates than Tijuana. Despite the difference, average citizens are often touched by cartels including shootouts, kidnappings, and other violent activities.
7) Most of the efforts by drug cartels to control migration happens South of the Texas border. Criminal organizations like the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel profit more from human smuggling than drug trafficking.
8) The majority of tunnels are found on the Arizona and California borders. The tunnels are generally discovered in areas where there are population centers on both sides of the border and a wall or fence is already in place. Few have been found in Texas, where there is a river.
9) Most tunnels are discovered thanks to informants; law enforcement technology has rarely been successful in locating border tunnels.
10) Most of the border does not have a drug tunnel problem. They are typically found in Douglas and Nogales, Arizona, as well as Mexicali, San Diego/San Isidro, California.
11) Cartels spend a lot of money building a tunnel–only to be discovered shortly after.



12) Claims by Democrats about the low crime rates in El Paso are an example of walls working. In areas with considerable border barriers such as El Paso, the regional criminal groups turn more professional and shy away from illegal immigration to traffic harder drugs through ports of entry.
13) The presence of physical barriers in cities like El Paso has led to fewer people coming over the border to commit petty crimes or bring loads of drugs on their backs. The criminal organizations in the area shifted toward corrupting U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to smuggle harder drugs.
14) A partially secured border is more deadly than an open or well-secured one. Previous administrations put barriers south of most cities in Arizona and California to funnel illicit traffic into areas that were easier to manage or too desolate to cross. This led to a spike in deaths since the desire of people to reach the U.S. pushes them to more remote and dangerous areas.
15) Human smuggling and illegal immigration will continue to be a problem until economic opportunities improve in Mexico and in Central America.
16) Mexican transnational criminal groups and their leaders have grown beyond the size and power of the American mafia from Prohibition Era and Al Capone. Cartels are integrated into the Mexican political culture and bureaucracy. Legalization would not stop them.
17) The decriminalization of marijuana and the production of higher quality plants in the U.S. versus Mexico had a series of unspoken consequences. After marijuana from Mexico was not able to compete with U.S.-grown plants, some cartels shifted their model more toward human smuggling–becoming a factor in the 2014 migrant crisis and the current one at the U.S. border.
18) After marijuana decriminalization in the U.S., cartels shifted to increase their cultivation of poppies and the production of black tar heroin. In order to compete with the Asian product, cartels use fentanyl–playing a role in the current opioid overdose epidemic.
19) The U.S. State Department influences how hard authorities crack down on cartels. U.S. agencies have been told to “measure their law enforcement priorities with the State Department’s diplomatic concerns.”
20) A cartel’s power in Mexico comes not from kingpins, but from politicians, financiers, lawyers, and money launderers. U.S. authorities and diplomats routinely focus on kingpins such as “El Chapo” and his lieutenants, but never go after the rest of the circle.
21) The state of Tamaulipas, directly south of Texas, has two former governors currently indicted for their alleged roles in helping cartels. One remains in Mexico, while the other is in U.S. custody awaiting trial.
22) U.S. diplomats are negotiating and playing along with the same Mexican politicians that protect cartels, in the interest of trade and diplomacy.
23) Certain factions of drug cartels have crossed the line into terrorism and should classified as such. The designation would change the way the U.S. alienates them from banks, financial resources, and politicians. Other cartels would be forced to tone down their actions or risk similar consequences.
24) Worries of Middle Eastern terrorists crossing the southwestern border are at times mitigated by cartel members who are informants for U.S. agencies that enjoy handsome incentives to turn people in.
25) The more likely scenario for terrorism deals with people flying into Canada and then entering the U.S. with visas. Most people on the terror watch list who try to enter the U.S. across the southern border are Somalis or Kurds.
26) Certain organizations like Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel present more of an imminent threat than foreign terrorists entering through the southern border.
27) Mexico’s ongoing cartel violence and drug war has led to more murders and disappearances than some international wars. Mexico has suffered more than 250,000 homicides and at least 30,000 disappearances since 2009.
28) Up to 70 percent of the women and girls from Central America who come through Mexico to the U.S. are sexually assaulted en route. Most women who leave Central America for the U.S. have the expectation of facing multiple abuses at the hands of cartel-connected human smugglers.
29) The State Department keeps U.S. law enforcement from being more aggressive against cartels. The State Department has everything to do with how law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate in Mexico–and any effort to secure the border without addressing the Department’s timidity in Mexico will likely fail or be less successful than it otherwise could be.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 



Democrats: A plague on the nation





How as Americans do we explain the intransigence of the left when it comes to national security?  'Tis a mystery.  These people, these Democrats in Congress, are among the most privileged persons on the planet.  They have enjoyed, more than most, the blessings bequeathed by the Founders, the authors of the Constitution.  Yet they are determined, like Obama, to transform us into something this nation was never meant to be: a land without borders.  While all of them are on record supporting a border wall in the past, now that Donald Trump is president, they all oppose it with every fiber of their being.  They know that it will work, and they cannot abide Trump having a win.  These people – Schumer, Pelosi, Gutiérrez, etc. – are truly venal.  Governor Brown has effectively destroyed California, now benighted by rampant homelessness and the crime that accompanies a population of illiterate, drug-addicted, gang-affiliated, criminally inclined persons adrift on our streets.  And now another young officer has been killed by an illegal alien thanks to the left's obsession with protecting the throngs of migrants crossing the border into the U.S. 
It should be obvious to every American by now that our progressive left does not have the best interest of Americans at heart.  Quite the opposite.  They loathe those of us who put Trump in the White House and are determined to punish us.  They intend to raise our taxes to pay for the $100B illegal aliens cost us every year.  They need open borders to import future voters; millions of illegals voted in the 2018 election thanks to motor voter bills and states' refusal to require voter ID.  The Democrats know they cannot win without cheating.  They cheated in 2016 and are still stunned that their carefully calculated strategy did not work – thus, the cover-up, AKA the Mueller investigation, of their many crimes committed over the Obama years, many at the direction of Hillary Clinton with Obama's knowledge and approval.  Our once most revered institutions, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, have been thoroughly corrupted.  Mueller, a willing participant in that corruption, is up to his eyeballs in the cover-up.
Will any of these people at the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, ever be held accountable?  To date, they have not been.  The power they have within the Deep State is beyond formidable; it is seemingly absolute.
It appears that America has become a sort of medieval oligarchy.  Trump, as the outsider he is, is a grave threat to all of those who believed they were in control in perpetuity.  They are ready and willing to do anything, no matter how illegal or immoral, to depose him, to expel him from office.
The Democrats in office today, and those about to take the majority in the House, are anti-Americans.  Of that you can be sure.  They care about keeping our borders open to all comers more than they care about keeping Americans safe.  They all supported a border wall when Clinton and Obama were in office.  Now they hate the president more than they love the country.  Of this there can be no doubt. 
The Democrats hate Trump so much that they want the economy to crash.  They are hoping for recession.  Is the Fed on board with the left?  It seems so since, that institution's raising the interest rate yet again is counterproductive to our thriving economy.  It is the Fed that whipsaws Wall Street, is it not?
It appears that the entirety of the left – the media, the Deep State, Wall Street, and the Democratic Party – is working in concert to bring Trump down, no matter the consequences to the country.  Meanwhile, the Republicans in the Congress, most but certainly not all, are as bendy as can be.  With notable exceptions – Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Tom Cotton, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert – they hate Trump, too.  He has ruffled their feathers, their comfortable position as go-alongs-to-get-alongs in D.C.  They have no real principles, no gumption, no fuel for a fight.  They are cowards all, pajama boys.  Paul Ryan is their poster boy.
The young policeman who died in California Christmas night will and should be a wake-up call for the Democrats.  They are 100% responsible for the presence of such criminals, protected by ridiculous sanctuary policies in our cities.  The media and the Democrats are in an uproar over the two migrant children who died at the hands of irresponsible parents who used them as a ticket to ride, yet they have nothing to say about the murder of the young policeman in Newman, Calif.  He is, to them, a casualty of politics, of their grand design to obliterate conservatives from the public realm forever.  They do not care about him, his widow, or his infant son.  They were happy to contribute to the odious Christine Blasey Ford's GoFundMe page, but not one of them will contribute to a GoFundMe page for Ronil Singh's family.  He is law enforcement, so they feel nothing. 
The Democratic Party of today is an abomination.  The assault on our constitutional republic began with Woodrow Wilson, and their long-range plan to overhaul what the Founders built is still operational.  The left has nothing but contempt for ordinary Americans, especially those who voted for Trump.
Leftists are dangerous when challenged, like a pack of jackals dismembering its prey.  They need to be defeated, indicted, arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.  They are a scourge on the nation as founded.  They do not love this country; they seek to destroy all that was and is good within it.

The Schumer & Pelosi show



Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the twin nutters of Congress, were certain they could beat Trump at his own game, but have made fools of themselves, as usual.  The stand-off is not over but with each passing day, the Democrats reveal more of their anti-American, pro-illegal immigration agenda.  Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for years: Democrats do not care about American citizens!  
We are an annoying inconvenience, especially those of us who do not buy what they are selling.  We vote against them, which makes them angry.  They lash out at us, call us names, impugn our intelligence with fervor.  All of the late-night comics, the Bill Mahers of the comedy branch of the entertainment industry, are especially venal.  Jimmy Kimmel has decried those who have contributed to the GoFundMe page to fund the border wall as meth addicts.  It was begun by a Vet, Brad Kolfage, who lost three limbs and it's raised nearly $15m.  
It appears that Democratic members of Congress are as snowflakey as millennials on our university campuses. They assume that anyone who opposes their ridiculous socialist, genderless, climate-alarmist, virtue-signaling directives is a Neanderthal, unfit to have an opinion.  It is then thoroughly acceptable to malign such people, those of us who oppose every aspect of their anti-America-as-founded agenda, in any and every  disgusting manner they can devise. 
The left is all about identity politics.  They assign all of us to a group -- racial, class, and/or all of their fabricated gender categories.  The right is all about individuals, their character, their talent, their contributions to society.  We do not care about skin color, economic class or sexual orientation.  We do care about good vs. evil, right vs. wrong.  This makes us quite villainous in the eyes of the left for whom everything is relative. For example, we do not think poverty causes crime, unlearned values of Western Civilization do.  Try to steal an election? It is moral if it takes out an opponent.  We are, it appears, the left vs. the right, very different on a neurological level. 
Schumer and Pelosi have armed guards whenever they are amongst the public.  But they are both fervent in their quest to deny us the right to bear arms and to prevent a wall on the southern border to protect us from the flood of lethal drugs that flow into the US.  They are impervious to the crimes of the barbaric gangs like MS13, no matter how many innocent Americans they kill.  They do not give a thought to the many illegals from terrorist nations that also seek to enter the country on a daily basis.  Schumer, Pelosi and their willing subjects in Congress ignore completely the horrific hazards that cross the border every day.  They want cheap labor, no matter how many Americans are left jobless, and they want, more than anything, a dependent underclass whom they mean to give the right to vote.  They already vote anyway, thanks to the Left's rejection of Common-sense voter ID.
If there were a television program based on Schumer and Pelosi, it would have to be a comedy; the two of them are so inept, so childish. They would be  Dumb and Dumber redux.  Each of them seems to believe they run the country and can dictate to the president how he will govern. They demand that Trump abandon the wall.  They have no intention of compromising; they only want to deny Trump and his supporters what they want -- border security that works.  So enraged, so benighted, by Trump's presidency, they would rather see us overrun by migrants from third-world nations, like those who have destroyed the UK, Germany, Sweden, and the rest of Europe, than protect America as a sovereign nation.
The "government shutdown" is just a ploy, many times overused by now, relatively meaningless to the lives of most Americans. The Schumer & Pelosi show will do everything they can to hype it as a disaster, but we all know it is nothing of the kind.  Trump must hold out for funding of the wall.  
While there have been some bad actors in our government in the past, Schumer and Pelosi are the worst of the worst.  They are equally arrogant, each thoroughly ignorant of reality beyond the bubble of wealth and privilege they inhabit.  They both believe themselves to be smarter than the rest of us, when in fact they are both really dim bulbs, long past their sell-by date.  Yes, Pelosi is good at raising money; how and why is a mystery.  That each of them is repeatedly re-elected does not say much for their constituents' familiarity with the Constitution, the law, American history or the facts in their own communities.  
San Francisco, Pelosi's district is now a hell-hole but for her walled compound.  New York too, like California, is a state that residents are fleeing as fast as they can.  Both states have been destroyed by moonbatty leftists; high taxes, dumbing down of education for political purposes, and the sacrifice of common sense to global warming alarmists.  Schumer and Pelosi have for years been on board with every silly attempt to restructure, to transform, American society.  They both jumped on the Obama bandwagon the moment he was elected.  Along with Obama, they are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration.  While their constant appearances on television are so often humorous (Pelosi's silly, practiced hand gestures and Schumer's relentless badgering of Trump),  they are not one bit funny.  They are just loathsome.


Hezb'allah and the Southern Border



The southern U.S. border remains mostly unprotected while Democrats remain determined to prevent building the border wall.  Meanwhile, cocaine continues to flow into the United States, smuggled in partly by the Hezb'allah terrorist organization.  The drug epidemic has cost a great number of lives, and the federal government must stop the flow of drugs by building a border wall, and by using new technologies to detect intrusion into the U.S.
Hezb'allah has murdered hundreds of citizens over the years, including in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 service personnel and the Beirut embassy bombing that killed 17 Americans.  These attacks demonstrate that Hezb'allah is an enemy of the United States and is aligned with the Iranian regime's "death to America" mindset.
However, the billions of dollars of cocaine and other narcotics that Hezb'allah smuggles into the United States and other countries each year is even more dangerous.  According to an exhaustive 2017 Politico report by Josh Meyer, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) initiated Project Cassandra in 2008 to investigate Hezb'allah's involvement in widespread drug-trafficking and put a stop to it.
The Politico report reveals how Hezb'allah has been raking in $200 million per month from cocaine and other drug sales.  Ayman Joumaa is a drug kingpin who has worked in concert with Mexico's violent and murderous Los Zetas drug cartel to move multi-ton loads of cocaine directly into the United States.  Joumaa's network would launder the drug income through the purchase of used cars at about 300 dealerships in the U.S.  The cars would be sent to West Africa to sell.  The proceeds from those sold cars would be couriered to Lebanon to fund Hezb'allah's terrorism.  This scheme was reported as early as 2011 in the New York Times.
In November 2011, prosecutors indicted Joumaa in absentia, accusing him of conspiring with Los Zetas and drug-suppliers in Colombia and Venezuela to smuggle at least 85,000 kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. and launder hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds.  The above mentioned New York Times report from December 2011 made clear that Joumaa was connected to Hezb'allah and, according to Israeli intelligence, worked for a senior Hezb'allah operative believed by Israel to be in charge of Hezb'allah's drug operations.
Notwithstanding the vast amount of evidence gathered by Project Cassandra, by the end of 2012, according to the Politico report, "senior officials at the Justice Department's National Security and Criminal divisions, and at the State Department and National Security Council, had shut down, derailed or delayed numerous other Hezb'allah-related cases with little or no explanation."  This, notwithstanding that U.S. agents discovered that Iran had "an entire Quds force network" in the United States, which was "laundering money, moving drugs and illegally smuggling Bell helicopters, night-vision goggles, and other items for Iran."  As of May 2018, Lebanon was working to protect Hezb'allah's drug trade.
The Politico report, quoting a former CIA officer, made it clear that the Obama administration, at the request of the Iranian nuclear negotiators, shut down the investigation of Hezb'allah.  The officer said, "It was a strategic decision to show good faith toward the Iranians in terms of reaching an agreement," adding that the Obama administration "really, really, really wanted the deal."  According to Derek Maltz, the longtime head of DEA Special Operations, many Project Cassandra agents will always believe that "we were shut down because of the Iran deal," adding, "it certainly contributed to why we got pushed aside and picked apart."
Hezb'allah has the sophistication, knowledge and wherewithal to cause tremendous harm to the U.S. and its allies.  One significant example, according to a 2010 Pentagon report, is Hezb'allah's contribution that enabled Shiite terrorist groups to "employ sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs), incorporating lessons learned from operations in Southern Lebanon."
According to David Asher, an illicit finance expert who worked on Project Cassandra, there was a clear link between the drug money Hezb'allah received from its sale of Colombian cocaine and the financing of IEDs used to kill American soldiers.  That link is Abdallah Safieddine, Hezb'allah's envoy to Iran and cousin of Hassan Nasrallah, who also allegedly oversaw Hezb'allah's "Business Affairs Component" involved in international drug-trafficking.  Safieddine was involved with weapons that Hezb'allah received from the drug network.  He even oversaw Hezb'allah's efforts to help Iran procure components and technology for its ballistic missile and clandestine nuclear programs.
In 2015, General Joseph Dunford confirmed that estimates place U.S. military deaths from Iranian IEDs (often with Hezb'allah's help) at about 500, though the number may be significantly higher.  According to a June 2018 report published by the Congressional Research Service, the total number of active-duty military deaths from IEDs since 2006 is 1,992, with 1,082 deaths in Iraq and 910 deaths in Afghanistan.
Hezb'allah's cocaine-smuggling has had tragic consequences in the United States.  Hezb'allah's annual sale of cocaine and other drugs has reached $2.4 billion.  According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analysis of 2015-2016 data from 31 states and Washington, D.C., there was a staggering 52.4% increase in cocaine-related overdose deaths over the period of just one year.
According to figures provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the U.S. has seen an astonishing rise in cocaine overdose deaths, largely driven by the rise in use of opioids.  Cocaine overdose deaths without the use of opioids increased by 150% from 2010 to 2016 and more than tripled when cocaine was used together with opioids.  Cocaine deaths have continued a steep climb with an estimated 14,556 in 2017, up from 10,375 in 2016.  As of 2015, new cocaine-users had increased to 968,000, almost completely spurred by Colombia's booming cocaine industry, with a 61% increase in cocaine use from 2013 to 2015 (5% of those aged 18 to 25 took cocaine in 2015).
A border wall has proven its effectiveness in practice, not just in theory.  The year after completion of El Paso's border wall, "the volume of marijuana and cocaine coming through El Paso and seized by Border Patrol agents has been cut in half."  President Trump has already approved 124 miles of border barriers, some of which have been installed.  While there are many other ways drugs can enter the U.S. aside from the southern border, including the introduction of drone delivery, the border wall is a necessary component to stem the drug flow, illegal immigration, and human-trafficking.  It should be used in conjunction with advanced technologies designed to detect border intrusion above ground as well as tunnel detection technology.
As of August 2017, the 1,954-mile southern border had a total of 705 miles of barriers, leaving 1,249 miles open.  There are currently about 354 miles of primary pedestrian fencing, protecting only about 18% of the southern U.S. border.  Democrats claim to want new technologies to protect the border but refuse to agree to build a border wall.
To prevent thousands of additional deaths at the hands of the Hezb'allah terrorist organization, the Trump administration should use unauthorized appropriations to fund the border wall and advanced border security technologies.  The U.S. must move aggressively to stop Hezb'allah's drug trade using every available tool, including ensuring a full commitment to projects like Project Cassandra to close down Hezb'allah's drug trade.  It is high time that the lives and safety of ordinary Americans take center stage and that every measure is taken to protect the southern border from drug-smuggling and illegal immigration.