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The Lord of War 'has served most of time': Pelosi defends releasing 'Merchant of Death' - who tried to arm the Taliban and sell missiles to down to US passenger jets - to bring Griner home and hints it's the only 'leverage' Biden had
Daily Mail ^ | 12/08/22 | Elizabeth Elkind

Posted on 12/09/2022 2:37:45 AM PST by Libloather

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has defended the Biden administration for exchanging notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner in a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia that left Marine veteran Paul Whelan languishing in a Russian jail.

In one of her last press conferences as Speaker of the House, Pelosi suggested that the White House had no other choice. The administration faces criticism for swapping the WNBA star for the former KGB agent who tried to arm the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Griner has been detained by Moscow since February on marijuana-linked drug charges, and was recently sentenced to nine years of grueling labor in a Russian penal colony.

Bout, 55, was snared by the DEA in a devilishly complicated sting operation in 2008 in which he thought he was selling arms to the FARC - Colombian rebels - to shoot down US passenger jets. He was the inspiration for the lead character played by Nicholas Cage in Lord of War.

The Biden administration had been under intense public pressure to get the celebrity basketball player out, against the backdrop of the worst diplomatic relations between the White House and the Kremlin since the Cold War.

Pelosi suggested at her weekly press conference that Bout, once nicknamed the 'merchant of death,' was the administration's only 'leverage' to free her.

Biden has been put under scrutiny for his failure to secure the release of Whelan and other Americans including Marc Fogel.

The criticism was compounded by anger over Bout's return to Moscow authorities. Republicans have attacked Biden for what they call a one-sided deal that has the potential of emboldening Vladimir Putin.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Conspiracy; History; Local News
KEYWORDS: biden; griner; missiles; pelosi
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I hear Gropin' Joe also threw in a box of chocolate pudding to sweeten the deal. His favorite.
1 posted on 12/09/2022 2:37:45 AM PST by Libloather
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To: Libloather

Depraved explaining. If the merchant of death sold hammers maybe she would have cared more.


2 posted on 12/09/2022 2:41:27 AM PST by Vision (Woke is communism and it has no place in America. Election Reform Now! Obama is an evildoer.)
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To: Libloather

The movie with Nicholas Cage is pretty nice I recommend catching it. It would be funny if they added an epilogue with Cage being exchanged for Griner.


3 posted on 12/09/2022 2:41:45 AM PST by jarwulf
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To: Libloather

As always, she defends the indefensible.


4 posted on 12/09/2022 2:45:07 AM PST by Old Yeller (If loser libs think climate change is a problem now, wait until they experience the Tribulation.)
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To: Libloather

Was she in the men’s penal colony, or the women’s?


5 posted on 12/09/2022 2:46:33 AM PST by oblomov
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To: Libloather

of course he had another option - refuse.


6 posted on 12/09/2022 2:54:24 AM PST by An.American.Expatriate (Here's my strategy on the War against Terrorism: We win, they lose. - with apologies to R.R.)
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To: Vision
If the merchant of death sold hammers maybe she would have cared more.

BINGO!

7 posted on 12/09/2022 3:04:10 AM PST by GOPJ (Has Biden had dinner with an "anti-evangelical"? Will Schumer condemn him if he has?)
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To: Libloather

Now that he’s out , and fancy free again, put a contract on him. No more jail time. Just end it. Can’t be that difficult. We have many assets . Plus , Biden believes in plausible deniability . Here’s a great opportunity to practice what he preaches. Trump would , in a hearbeat.


8 posted on 12/09/2022 3:04:10 AM PST by LeoWindhorse
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To: Libloather

Yesterday, the WH said it was Griner or no one. My response would have been: No one, we’re keeping Bout


9 posted on 12/09/2022 3:06:10 AM PST by nuconvert ( Warning: Accused of being a radical militarist. Approach with caution.)
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To: Libloather

Sounds like they freed the creature from the pits of hell in Revelation.

Griner is going to have to live with a lot of negative press. And I personally would not want to be her 6 months from now if Russia is suddenly winning on the war path.

This swap really was no swap at all. Plus SA helped? The cost of that help was the dropping of a lawsuit here? I know ...no one is connecting those dots just yet, the coincidence is right there. Plus SA is working with Russia these days and had dropped the petrodollar a few months ago.

This whole swap/deal stinks to high heaven. What weapons are being reverse engineered by Russia and China that we have given to SA. And now the Merchant of Death is loosed upon the world?

I really do not need all the finer details to make these connections. This has got to be the worst deal in human history. Griner will commit suicide inside of a year from the guilt and stress at what has been done.

We have had many wonders in the sky lately and now will this exchange give us the smoke from the abyss?

Then the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and it was given the key to the pit of the Abyss. 2 The star opened the pit of the Abyss, and smoke rose out of it like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the pit. 3And out of the smoke, locusts descended on the earth, and they were given power like that of the scorpions of the earth.…


10 posted on 12/09/2022 3:22:49 AM PST by EBH
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To: Libloather

heck Obama and joe gave Afghanistan weapons for free


11 posted on 12/09/2022 3:30:29 AM PST by mylife (And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids...)
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To: Vision

The average conservative Joe has had a hard time figuring out the problem with Bout. It seems that the problem isn’t that he was an arms dealer but that he was selling arms to the wrong prople.


12 posted on 12/09/2022 3:43:52 AM PST by Socon-Econ (adi)
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To: Libloather

Pretty weak hand if Bout was “the only leverage Biden had.”


13 posted on 12/09/2022 3:45:26 AM PST by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: Libloather

Karine Jean-Pierre said during the press conference that Bout didn’t have much more time to serve. He got a mandatory 25 years.


14 posted on 12/09/2022 3:51:14 AM PST by nuconvert ( Warning: Accused of being a radical militarist. Approach with caution.)
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To: Libloather

Another democrat swipe.
Where is ole birddog? You recall , he was obunga’z
trade ducant goten back on a real deal of 5 badmans
For one traitor


15 posted on 12/09/2022 3:53:57 AM PST by Recompennation (Don’t blame me my vote didn’t count )
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To: Libloather

Keep in mind he worked for the drug cartels.


16 posted on 12/09/2022 4:01:46 AM PST by Williams (Stop Tolerating The IntolerantNo one wants to)
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To: Libloather

ALL that matters to the radical leftists, Godless Democrats is to advocate for/assist/help/further/promote/force on people perversion and sexual immorality. NOTHING else matters to them, not even our lives.


17 posted on 12/09/2022 4:02:19 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: Socon-Econ

All they have to do is google his name. He sells weapons to terrorists, the Taliban, South American drug cartels all which kill Americans.


18 posted on 12/09/2022 4:25:31 AM PST by Vision (Woke is communism and it has no place in America. Election Reform Now! Obama is an evildoer.)
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To: Vision

At this point, so does the US government. We lost any moral high ground we may have had.


19 posted on 12/09/2022 4:30:23 AM PST by binreadin
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To: Libloather

In September 1992 transport planes built in the Soviet Union and carrying arms had begun to transit the Sudan on their way to the airport at Maribor, Slovenia. The shipments from Khartoum were moved by planes under the control of Viktor Anatoliyevich Bout (AKA, Boutov, Butt, Bouta, etc.,) Born at Dushanbe, Tashkent in 1967, Bout attended the Moscow Military Institute of Foreign Languages and was shortly thereafter active in the Soviet airforce in Angola. Decomissioned in 1991, he and his men formed Transavia Export Cargo. In the following year he began to move arms to Afghanistan where he reportedly was involved with the various Islamist warlords at war with one another. Possessing myriad passports and Soviet-built planes, his various air cargo lines used airports from Geneva through central Africa. At what point Bout began operating with Bin Laden in the Balkans is unknown, but Bout was already involved with the Abu Sayyaf movement in the Philippines.
As the Bosniak jihad expanded Bout’s planes were often seen in Bulgarian airports where he had contacts with local arms merchants. In March 1995 he founded the Trans Aviation Network Group in Ostende, Belgium, a site that was later discovered useful to traffickers who funneled arms to the Balkans. Bout was also an associate of money launderers and diamond traders who worked for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and by the close of the nineteen nineties he had the reputation of the world’s most important arms trafficker.


20 posted on 12/09/2022 5:02:10 AM PST by Bookshelf
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