April 01, 2020 "Information Clearing House" -   According to the parable, the ungrateful son takes out a life insurance policy on his parents, murders them to collect, and is caught and found guilty. At his sentencing, the judge asks if he has anything to say on his behalf. The son replies: “Have mercy upon me because I am an orphan.” That’s chutzpah.

U.S. Attorney General Barr’s indictments on March 26 against the government of Venezuela for narcoterrorism go beyond chutzpah. For starters, William P. Barr was chief counsel for the CIA airline, Southern Air Transport, implicated in the 1980s for running illicit drugs and related narco-terrorism during Iran-Contra.

The U.S. charges of drug trafficking against Venezuela are the height of hypocrisy. The world’s leading source of heroin is U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and the U.S. is the world’s largest cocaine market.

The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), is the latest in a line of corrupt presidents since the 2009 U.S.-backed coup there. JOH was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in October by a US federal court for smuggling millions of dollars worth of cocaine into the U.S.

Colombia is the chief regional U.S. client state, distinguished by being the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the hemisphere. Hillary Clinton called Plan Colombia a model for Latin America. Yet this model is the planet’s largest supplier of illicit cocaine. And that’s only scratching the surface of U.S. history of complicity in international narcotrafficking.

The false criminal charges by the U.S. government against fourteen high-ranking Venezuelan officials are for alleged involvement in international drug trafficking. The U.S. government has, in effect, put a $15 million bounty on Venezuelan President Maduro and bounties of $10 million each for the head of the National Constituent Assembly and other leading officials and former officials.

Thirty years ago, the U.S. posted a $1 million reward on the head of Manuel Noriega, then president of Panama, on charges of narcotrafficking. Noriega had long been a U.S. security asset assisting in the CIA’s dirty Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Noriega had also used his U.S. patronage to consolidate his rule in Panama as well as his ties with Colombian drug cartels. However, toward the end of his tenure, Noriega did not demonstrate a sufficient level of servility to his U.S. handlers and was deposed in the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, taking the lives of many uncounted civilians.

As RT warns: “The US indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his subordinates on narcotrafficking charges echoes the rationale used to invade Panama and kidnap its leader.” Unlike the Noriega case, where the Panamanian president was convicted of massive drug trafficking with the knowledge and full protection of the CIA and other security agencies, the U.S. lacks evidence against the Venezuelans.