Hypocrite of the week: Ollie North (and there were a lot of contenders)
by digby
My piece over at Salon this morning takes a look at the patriot Ollie North on the Bergdahl swap which he insists was not only a POW exchange but was a hostage situationthat must have featured a huge ransom. He is an expert on paying ransom for hostages, but he would have probably preferred sending some missiles to the Taliban rather than sending some worn our old Taliban fighters. At least that’s how he’s done it in the past:
The propensity of right wingers to be blatantly inconsistent with their most cherished principles is truly astonishing and should never be taken for granted. The White House did err in assuming that the chauvinist Republicans (and the many timorous Democrats who fear them) would not criticize this release simply because a soldier was involved. (All you had to do was look back at Rush Limbaugh’s willingness to slander any soldier, officer or enlisted, who dared to criticize the war effort just a few years ago to see how foolish that assumption was.)
But there are hypocrites and there are hypocrites. And not even the sainted POW John McCain’s stunning flip-flop on the Bergdahl can come close to Lt. Col Oliver North (Ret.) for sheer, audacious hypocrisy.