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Cheese Sandwich

(9,086 posts)
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 12:33 AM Mar 2016

Question for people who supported Reagan's illegal CIA war on the elected government of Nicaragua:

Who are you voting for in the primaries?

Bernie went to Nicaragua on a fact finding mission and spoke out against Reagan's illegal CIA death squads. He didn't think the US should use a terrorist army to overthrow a democratically elected government. So I guess you won't be voting for him.

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Question for people who supported Reagan's illegal CIA war on the elected government of Nicaragua: (Original Post) Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 OP
Lol! zappaman Mar 2016 #1
You must not know about Iran Contra. Octafish Mar 2016 #7
There were a lot of RW Cold War Dems in on Iran-Contra, including the Cong "investigators," such leveymg Mar 2016 #31
Lee Hamilton admitted there may be more to Iran-Contra to October Surprise connection. Octafish Mar 2016 #37
Same playbook. The prohibition against domestic covert operations is best observed in the breach leveymg Mar 2016 #39
License to Kill. License to Steal. License to Betray. Octafish Mar 2016 #40
That's how covert program authorization has been interepreted - immunity for everything. leveymg Mar 2016 #41
Which is why you and I give a damn (and assholes don't). Octafish Mar 2016 #42
You do know that according to Frank Knight, father of Chicago Sch Econ, deception is at the heart of leveymg Mar 2016 #43
Like a Velvety Mace, fitting hand in iron-fisted glove with PNAC. Octafish Mar 2016 #44
"CIA-backed deathsquads are funny! hurhurhur!!!" Mufaddal Mar 2016 #17
really! tk2kewl Mar 2016 #22
No. LWolf Mar 2016 #23
It's a classic "I can't defend this so I'll mock the OP instead" diversion. arcane1 Mar 2016 #51
the old squads are back in Honduras, and Rios Montt's still kicking MisterP Mar 2016 #2
the more things change... they stay the same. nt Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #5
I wonder if the ex- Secretary of State monicaangela Mar 2016 #30
And her husband, who sent the AR national guard to Honduras for "training" and they somehow "left leveymg Mar 2016 #33
We should have supported the Sandinistas. Vattel Mar 2016 #3
I think so too. Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #6
blame disco floppyboo Mar 2016 #4
The Clash called treestar Mar 2016 #27
They are younger than either of our candidates. Bluenorthwest Mar 2016 #35
Is there Eko Mar 2016 #8
Yes but they won't come into this thread. JackRiddler Mar 2016 #9
Care to Eko Mar 2016 #10
Watch LBN daily for threads about Latin America. JackRiddler Mar 2016 #11
Also, there are red-baiting threads on this forum right now. JackRiddler Mar 2016 #13
I check LBN Eko Mar 2016 #14
Just did a site search Eko Mar 2016 #15
Probably because there was no DU in the 80s so there just haven't been a lot of posts on the subject Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #20
You must have missed this tidbit kristopher Mar 2016 #21
That was my first thought G_j Mar 2016 #12
Probably. There are a lot of people on the site. Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #16
Probabilities Eko Mar 2016 #18
If you remember the 80s, I think the Democrats were split on this issue at the time, so there Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #19
It's just surreal! I bet Iran Contra is now ok for some folks. myrna minx Mar 2016 #24
I actually did argue with a poster who thought his 'experience and travels' should be admired. nt. polly7 Mar 2016 #25
The 80s called treestar Mar 2016 #26
Past is prologue Armstead Mar 2016 #36
Let's not forget that supporting the Nicaraguan Contra war violated the Boland amendment think Mar 2016 #28
Yes as I recall it was illegal. Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #46
Sorry. Was meant as a general statement to those who supported Reagan rather than the Dem who think Mar 2016 #47
Yes thanks Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #49
That was a gotcha moment for Bernie monicaangela Mar 2016 #29
No Hillarian responses here. earthside Mar 2016 #32
Everyone should watch the Bernie foreign policy video from 1985. Armstead Mar 2016 #34
Hillary has his vote in the general election. PowerToThePeople Mar 2016 #38
He strikes be as a Trump or Cruz guy. Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #45
Some people have forgotten the whole Ollie North Iran contra story and the Nicaragua tie in EndElectoral Mar 2016 #48
But..but..those damned Reds overthrew our ally the well known humanitarian Somoza! Tierra_y_Libertad Mar 2016 #50

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
7. You must not know about Iran Contra.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 01:07 AM
Mar 2016

It was all treason by the Bush and Reagan regime, you know, the BFEE.




Who Gave Bush His Teflon Coat in the Iran Contra Scam?

Los Angeles Times
November 04, 1988|JONATHAN KWITNY |

EXCERPT...

But the way George Bush has been let off the hook sickens me--as does the notion that he could be an acceptable candidate for the presidency, let alone leading the polls, less than two years after the Iran-Contra scandal broke.

The Bush-Reagan team rode to office on the issue of terrorism, pledging to halt it by never negotiating with terrorists and stopping others from doing so. For much of their Administration, federal law prohibited waging war on Nicaragua. Yet Bush attended dozens of meetings at which were discussed either our active role in starting and sustaining the Contra war or the secret supply of arms to Iran, which in public he called a leading terrorist state. Bush's assertion now that he didn't know of these activities is preposterous. An aide's minutes show him being briefed on arms shipments to Iran as they were in progress. He says that he misunderstood; he thought that the sales were Israeli. If so, he was muddleheaded on this linchpin issue and lacked leadership, considering our influence over Israel. Alternatively, he is simply lying; records show that he had been told earlier that Israel was acting as our front in the transactions.

In fact, Bob Woodward has reported, and Bush hasn't (to my knowledge) denied, that Bush was with Reagan when the President signed the Bible that was delivered as a gift to the "terrorist" ayatollah along with a planeload of missiles and other arms.

Nor was Bush just a loyal confidant who kept his mouth shut when Reagan erred. Bush, a former CIA director, hired career CIA officer Donald Gregg as his personal vice presidential adviser. When Contra military aid was banned, Gregg began phoning and meeting with an old CIA pal of both men, Felix Rodriguez, who, allegedly as a private citizen, went to the Salvadoran military base where arms were transferred for shipment in small craft to Contra bases.

Guns, ammo, mines and explosives were collected by men close to White House aide Oliver North and used in a terror war against civilian farm cooperatives in Nicaragua. Rodriguez ran the arms depot, at times talking almost daily with Gregg and meeting at least three times with Bush--whose office says that they only discussed other things, and that the presence of the arms deals on the agenda for one of those meetings was a typing error.

It gets worse. As his own assistant Rodriguez hired, under an assumed name, Luis Posada Carriles, another former CIA colleague who had just been sprung from a Venezuelan jail--with his help, Rodriguez has hinted. Posada was in jail for the mid-air bombing of a civilian Cuban airliner that took 73 lives. That surpasses all the Arab terrorist acts that Bush and Reagan have complained of.

Bush's office has said that he didn't know of Posada's background. Nonsense. Posada bombed that airliner on Bush's watch, in October, 1976, and Castro's howls of CIA culpability and U.S. denials were big news. Surely a CIA director worthy of the title would have called for the file on Posada.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-04/local/me-984_1_contra-arms



PS: One of the last great investigative writers, Jonathan Kwitny wrote "The Crimes of Patriots," about the Nugan Hand Bank CIA scam, and soon after got sick with cancer and died.

Maybe if he hadn't you'd know not to make fun of people who can't stand Bush-Reagan treason, zappaman. We're called Democrats.

leveymg

(36,418 posts)
31. There were a lot of RW Cold War Dems in on Iran-Contra, including the Cong "investigators," such
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 10:52 AM
Mar 2016

as Lee Hamilton who became the whitewash guy of choice for several "investigations" of covert action crimes.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
37. Lee Hamilton admitted there may be more to Iran-Contra to October Surprise connection.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 11:26 AM
Mar 2016

An amazing figure in the art of secret governance and reading between the redactions.



Second Thoughts on October Surprise

Special Report: New evidence has shaken the confidence of former Rep. Lee Hamilton in his two-decade-old judgment clearing Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign of going behind President Carter's back to frustrate his efforts to free 52 U.S. hostages in Iran, the so-called October Surprise case


By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews, June 8, 2013

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who oversaw two congressional investigations into Ronald Reagan's secret dealings with Iran, says a key piece of evidence was withheld that could have altered his conclusion clearing Reagan's 1980 campaign of allegations that it sabotaged President Jimmy Carter's hostage negotiations with Iran.

In a phone interview on Thursday, the Indiana Democrat responded to a document that I had e-mailed him revealing that in 1991 a deputy White House counsel working for then-President George H.W. Bush was notified by the State Department that Reagan's campaign director William Casey had taken a trip to Madrid in relation to the so-called October Surprise issue.

Casey's alleged trip to Madrid in 1980 was at the center of Hamilton's investigation in 1991-92 into whether Reagan's campaign went behind Carter's back to frustrate his attempts to free 52 American hostages before the 1980 election, popularly known as the "October Surprise." Hamilton's task force dismissed the allegations after concluding that Casey had not traveled to Madrid.

"We found no evidence to confirm Casey's trip to Madrid," Hamilton told me. "We couldn't show that. The (Bush-41) White House did not notify us that he did make the trip. Should they have passed that on to us? They should have because they knew we were interested in that."

Asked if knowledge that Casey had traveled to Madrid might have changed the task force's dismissive October Surprise conclusion, Hamilton said yes, "because the question of the Madrid trip was key" to the task force's investigation. "If the White House knew that Casey was there, they certainly should have shared it with us," Hamilton said, adding that "you have to rely on people" in authority to comply with information requests.

The document revealing White House knowledge of Casey's Madrid trip was among records released to me by the archivists at the George H.W. Bush library in College Station, Texas. The U.S. Embassy’s confirmation of Casey's trip was passed along by State Department legal adviser Edwin D. Williamson to Associate White House Counsel Chester Paul Beach Jr. in early November 1991, just as the October Surprise inquiry was taking shape.

Williamson said that among the State Department "material potentially relevant to the October Surprise allegations (was) a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown," Beach noted in a "memorandum for record" dated Nov. 4, 1991.

CONTINUED...

https://consortiumnews.com/2013/06/08/second-thoughts-on-october-surprise/



Gee. It's like they do it on purpose, all the forgetting.

Glad there are historians around.

leveymg

(36,418 posts)
39. Same playbook. The prohibition against domestic covert operations is best observed in the breach
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 11:39 AM
Mar 2016

Same players, all along. Once read into the program, lifetime work with immunity from prosecution.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
40. License to Kill. License to Steal. License to Betray.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 12:35 PM
Mar 2016

Sweet! As long as it's in the name of Capitalism's Invisible Army, no problem.

Somewhere in Detroit, 1980 GOP Convention:



After the election, the relationship between headmaster and pupil would evolve:



George Bush Takes Charge

The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

CONTINUED...



More details from the good professor:



EXCERPT...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

[font color="green"]The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.
[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.



Old news to you, leveymg. A shocker for those still capable of rational thought.

Why this all matters: There's a steady bloody red line from 1981 to the present day few write about. More would, were the nation's news media honest and lived up to their constitutional mandate.

leveymg

(36,418 posts)
41. That's how covert program authorization has been interepreted - immunity for everything.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 01:29 PM
Mar 2016

Everything is secret - it's a crime to reveal the worst crimes of state. To actively expose or oppose them is handled as espionage or terrorism. Nobody in a position of command authority is ever held accountable -- even in cases of grossest negligence, corruption and defiance of constituted legal authority, (e.g., Vietnam, Iran-Contra/BCCI, 9/11) -- unless another faction of covert operators is offended, inconvenienced, or their interests perceived harmed. That's pretty rare.

Democracy and law have nothing to do with it.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
42. Which is why you and I give a damn (and assholes don't).
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 03:16 PM
Mar 2016

We are Democrats. We believe in Democracy. That includes a nation where ALL are equal under law.

For example, a financial problem that gets ZERO analysis in Corporate McPravda:



Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism

The Dark Age of Money

by JAMES C. KENNEDY
CounterPunch Oct. 24, 2012

EXCERPT...

Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedman’s collective works constitute the foundation of Monetary Fascism. Knowing that the term ’Fascism’ was universally unpopular; Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics masquerade these works as ‘Capitalism’ and ’Free Market’ economics.

SNIP...

The fundamental difference between Adam Smith’s free market capitalism and Friedman’s ‘free market capitalism’ is that Friedman’s is a hyper extractive model, the kind that creates and maintains Third-World-Countries and Banana-Republics, without geo-political borders.

If you say that this is nothing new, you miss the point. Friedman does not differentiate between some third world country and his own. The ultimate difference is that Friedman has created a model that sanctions and promotes the exploitation of his own country, in fact every country, for the benefit of the investor, money the uber-wealthy. He dressed up this noxious ideology as ‘free market capitalism’ and then convinced most of the world to embrace it as their economic salvation.

SNIP...

[font color="green"]Monetary Fascism, as conceived by Friedman, uses the powers of the state to put the interest of money and the financial class above and beyond all other forms of industry (and other stake holders) and the state itself.[/font color]

SNIP...

Money has become the state and the traditional state is forced to serve money’s interests. Everywhere the Financial Class is openly lording over sovereign nations. Ireland, Greece and Spain are subject to ultimatums and remember Hank Paulson’s $700 billion extortion from the U.S. Congress. The $700 billion was just the wedge. Thanks to unlimited access to the Discount Window, Quantitative Easing and other taxpayer funded debt-swap bailouts the total transfers to the financial industry exceeded $16 trillion as of July 2010 according to a Federal Reserve Audit. All of this was dumped on the taxpayer and it is still growing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/24/the-dark-age-of-money/



Where the New Democrat Thing comes in:




President Clinton and the Chilean Model.

By José Piñera

Midnight at the House of Good and Evil

"It is 12:30 at night, and Bill Clinton asks me and Dottie: 'What do you know about the Chilean social-security system?'” recounted Richard Lamm, the three-term former governor of Colorado. It was March 1995, and Lamm and his wife were staying that weekend in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.

I read about this surprising midnight conversation in an article by Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, May 13, 1996), as I was waiting at Dulles International Airport for a flight to Europe. The article also said that early the next morning, before he left to go jogging, President Bill Clinton arranged for a special report about the Chilean reform produced by his staff to be slipped under Lamm's door.

That news piqued my interest, so as soon as I came back to the United States, I went to visit Richard Lamm. I wanted to know the exact circumstances in which the president of the world’s superpower engages a fellow former governor in a Saturday night exchange about the system I had implemented 15 years earlier.

Lamn and I shared a coffee on the terrace of his house in Denver. He not only was the most genial host to this curious Chilean, but he also proved to be deeply motivated by the issues surrounding aging and the future of America. So we had an engaging conversation. At the conclusion, I ventured to ask him for a copy of the report that Clinton had given him. He agreed to give it to me on the condition that I do not make it public while Clinton was president. He also gave me a copy of the handwritten note on White House stationery, dated 3-21-95, which accompanied the report slipped under his door. It read:

Dick,
Sorry I missed you this morning.
It was great to have you and Dottie here.
Here's the stuff on Chile I mentioned.
Best,
Bill.


Three months before that Clinton-Lamm conversation about the Chilean system, I had a long lunch in Santiago with journalist Joe Klein of Newsweek magazine. A few weeks afterwards, he wrote a compelling article entitled,[font color="green"] "If Chile can do it...couldn´t North America privatize its social-security system?" [/font color]He concluded by stating that "the Chilean system is perhaps the first significant social-policy idea to emanate from the Southern Hemisphere." (Newsweek, December 12, 1994).

I have reasons to think that probably this piece got Clinton’s attention and, given his passion for policy issues, he became a quasi expert on Chile’s Social Security reform. Clinton was familiar with Klein, as the journalist covered the 1992 presidential race and went on anonymously to write the bestseller Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled account of Clinton’s campaign.

“The mother of all reforms”

While studying for a Masters and a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University, I became enamored with America’s unique experiment in liberty and limited government. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the first volume of Democracy in America hoping that many of the salutary aspects of American society might be exported to his native France. I dreamed with exporting them to my native Chile.

So, upon finishing my Ph.D. in 1974 and while fully enjoying my position as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Boston University, I took on the most difficult decision in my life: to go back to help my country rebuild its destroyed economy and democracy along the lines of the principles and institutions created in America by the Founding Fathers. Soon after I became Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and in 1980 I was able to create a fully funded system of personal retirement accounts. Historian Niall Ferguson has stated that this reform was “the most profound challenge to the welfare state in a generation. Thatcher and Reagan came later. The backlash against welfare started in Chile.”

But while de Tocqueville’s 1835 treatment contained largely effusive praise of American government, the second volume of Democracy in America, published five years later, strikes a more cautionary tone. He warned that “the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” In fact at some point during the 20th century, the culture of self reliance and individual responsibility that had made America a great and free nation was diluted by the creation of [font color="green"] “an Entitlement State,”[/font color] reminiscent of the increasingly failed European welfare state. What America needed was a return to basics, to the founding tenets of limited government and personal responsibility.

[font color="green"]In a way, the principles America helped export so successfully to Chile through a group of free market economists needed to be reaffirmed through an emblematic reform. I felt that the Chilean solution to the impending Social Security crisis could be applied in the USA.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.josepinera.org/articles/articles_clinton_chilean_model.htm




We need to get back to the day when people were more important than profits; when peace trumped money. I almost envy people who never will remember when that was what being a Democrat stood for.

leveymg

(36,418 posts)
43. You do know that according to Frank Knight, father of Chicago Sch Econ, deception is at the heart of
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 04:03 PM
Mar 2016

the brand of Neo-monetarism taught by Friedman and his acolytes? To boost the marginal reinvestment curve, consumers and workers have to be convinced not to demand higher wages they would use to consume. The economist's job, according to the Chicago School, is to help capital boost investment. One way to do that, Knight taught, is to trick the 99% into thinking the pie is smaller than it actually is or to convince the public that demanding wage increases is futile. Another approach, as the Chilean Junta model showed, is to create a national emergency and bust down wages by sheer force of state terror.

Nice model they teach at University of Chicago. Very widely influential. Very mainstream today.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
44. Like a Velvety Mace, fitting hand in iron-fisted glove with PNAC.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 04:50 PM
Mar 2016

Leo Strauss and his acolytes don't much care for We the People's input on how the country and economy get run, either.





Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.

By Jim Lobe / AlterNet May 18, 2003

What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?

A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.

The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.

Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.

Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss%27_philosophy_of_deception



Great school. Must be a small campus. I know the heads that "Money Trumps Peace" fit into certainly are.

LWolf

(46,179 posts)
23. No.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 09:47 AM
Mar 2016

Really, respectfully, your response tells people who see it that either:

1. YOU are trying way too hard, stepping into a mess you aren't prepared to deal with, or

2. Maybe you are too young, or just weren't paying attention in 1981 and beyond? or

3. You really support Ronald Reagan's support of the Contras, and use of the CIA to funnel arms, equipment, and money to them?

 

arcane1

(38,613 posts)
51. It's a classic "I can't defend this so I'll mock the OP instead" diversion.
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 04:40 PM
Mar 2016

And it failed, miserably

MisterP

(23,730 posts)
2. the old squads are back in Honduras, and Rios Montt's still kicking
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 12:34 AM
Mar 2016

around to be reinstalled in Guatemala!

leveymg

(36,418 posts)
33. And her husband, who sent the AR national guard to Honduras for "training" and they somehow "left
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 11:05 AM
Mar 2016

behind" their equipment there. http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-10/opinion/op-2512_1_national-guard-units , http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/why-are-we-in-honduras/Content?oid=871883 Meanwhile, in Mena, AR, . . . meanwhile, at Rose Law Firm, Hillary was defending the giant Stephens Bros. investment firm from charges of facilitating the illegal BCCI (Saudi) takeover of American banks and S&Ls . . . meanwhile, George H.W. Bush and a Colonel in the White House basement were managing the whole operation arming both sides to kill each other in the Iran-Iraq War. . . just by coincidence, meanwhile a trusted Governor in Arkansas and his clever lawyer wife were being groomed for higher things. . . meanwhile . . .

Send Money, Guns and Lawyers



 

Cheese Sandwich

(9,086 posts)
6. I think so too.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 12:54 AM
Mar 2016

At the least should have stayed out of it. But it would have been better to support democracy.

treestar

(82,383 posts)
27. The Clash called
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 10:37 AM
Mar 2016

they want the 80s back. The ones alive are age 60 now. I'd love to go back there too, well maybe not. Lack of technology that we have and enjoy today.

 

Bluenorthwest

(45,319 posts)
35. They are younger than either of our candidates.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 11:20 AM
Mar 2016

By years. The Clash was correct at that time and remain correct today.



This is a public service announcement
With guitar
Know your rights all three of them

Number 1
You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a CRIME!
Unless it was done by a
Policeman or aristocrat
Know your rights

And Number 2
You have the right to food money
Providing of course you
Don't mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation

Know your rights
These are your rights

Eko

(7,170 posts)
15. Just did a site search
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 02:06 AM
Mar 2016

for Nicaragua and the first page of results has nothing like you or the op say, granted that is just the first page of results but if someone is going to claim something then the burden of proof is upon them to prove it.

 

Cheese Sandwich

(9,086 posts)
20. Probably because there was no DU in the 80s so there just haven't been a lot of posts on the subject
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 04:04 AM
Mar 2016

kristopher

(29,798 posts)
21. You must have missed this tidbit
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 04:13 AM
Mar 2016
"Enter Discussion Forums
231,552 user registrations and 71,445,426 posts since 2001


There might be a slight deficiency in your sampling method.

Eko

(7,170 posts)
18. Probabilities
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 02:58 AM
Mar 2016

state there are some klu klux klan members on here, that doesn't make it true nor would I post an op asking them questions.

 

Cheese Sandwich

(9,086 posts)
19. If you remember the 80s, I think the Democrats were split on this issue at the time, so there
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 03:59 AM
Mar 2016

are probably some around who supported it.

It wasn't framed as supporting illegal CIA death squads. They called it supporting the freedom fighters.

myrna minx

(22,772 posts)
24. It's just surreal! I bet Iran Contra is now ok for some folks.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 10:32 AM
Mar 2016

Perhaps we could look to Henry Kissinger for some wisdom. This stuff is recent history for crying out loud.

polly7

(20,582 posts)
25. I actually did argue with a poster who thought his 'experience and travels' should be admired. nt.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 10:34 AM
Mar 2016

treestar

(82,383 posts)
26. The 80s called
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 10:34 AM
Mar 2016

I liked it - I was young then. I don't think my 2016 votes will depend on anything that occurred in the 80s however.

 

think

(11,641 posts)
28. Let's not forget that supporting the Nicaraguan Contra war violated the Boland amendment
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 10:44 AM
Mar 2016

Bold added...

Boland Amendment

The Boland Amendment is a term describing three U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984, all aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua. The first Boland Amendment was part of the House Appropriations Bill of 1982, which was attached as a rider to the Defense Appropriations Act of 1983, named for the Massachusetts Democrat, Representative Edward Boland, who authored it. The House of Representatives passed the Defense Appropriations Act 411–0 on December 8, 1982 and it was signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 21, 1982.[1] The amendment outlawed U.S. assistance to the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government, while allowing assistance for other purposes.[2]

Beyond restricting overt U.S. support of the Contras, the most significant effect of the Boland Amendment was the Iran–Contra affair, during which the Reagan Administration circumvented the Amendment, without consent of Congress, in order to continue supplying arms to the Contras....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boland_Amendment
 

think

(11,641 posts)
47. Sorry. Was meant as a general statement to those who supported Reagan rather than the Dem who
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 04:24 PM
Mar 2016

made sure it was illegal.



monicaangela

(1,508 posts)
29. That was a gotcha moment for Bernie
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 10:45 AM
Mar 2016

That could only work on low information voters. Anybody with an inkling of the corruption that went on during the Iran/Contra affair knows that anybody that was against that and was brave enough to go on his own to denounce it deserves to be President.

earthside

(6,960 posts)
32. No Hillarian responses here.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 11:01 AM
Mar 2016

I wonder what they are going to say about Reagan and Nicaragua.

I would bet that their first reaction would be reactive ... if Sanders was against the Sandinistas, well, they have to be for the Somocistas, the Contras, the Reagan policy.

Or I suppose they might be against the Reagan secret war, but against the Sandinista government? How do you do that?

I'd like to know if Hillary would have been (or was) supportive of the Boland Amendment that prohibited further funding of the Contras by the U.S. government ... the contravention of which by Reagan and Oliver North led to the Iran-Contra scandal.

I marched against the Reagan intervention and was quite involved at the time with the sanctuary movement for refugee Nicuraguans and Salvadorans. You did't have to be a socialist or communist-sympathizer to be against Reagan's horrible policies in Central America.

Sen. Sanders was/is 100 percent correct on this issue.

 

Tierra_y_Libertad

(50,414 posts)
50. But..but..those damned Reds overthrew our ally the well known humanitarian Somoza!
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 04:34 PM
Mar 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nicaragua

The incident humiliated the government and greatly enhanced the prestige of the FSLN. Somoza, in his memoirs, refers to this action as the beginning of a sharp escalation in terms of Sandinista attacks and government reprisals. Martial law was declared in 1975, and the National Guard began to raze villages in the jungle suspected of supporting the rebels. Human rights groups condemned the actions, but U.S. President Gerald Ford refused to break the U.S. alliance with Somoza.

The country tipped into full-scale civil war with the 1978 murder of Pedro Chamorro, who had opposed violence against the regime. 50,000 turned out for his funeral. It was assumed by many that Somoza had ordered his assassination (evidence implicated Somoza's son and other members of the National Guard). A nationwide strike, including labour and private businesses, commenced in protest, demanding an end to the dictatorship. At the same time, the Sandinistas stepped up their rate of guerrilla activity. Several towns, assisted by Sandinista guerrillas, expelled their National Guard units. Somoza responded with increasing violence and repression. When León became the first city in Nicaragua to fall to the Sandinistas, he responded with aerial bombardment, famously ordering the air force to "bomb everything that moves until it stops moving."

The U.S. media grew increasingly unfavorable in its reporting on the situation in Nicaragua. Realizing that the Somoza dictatorship was unsustainable, the Carter administration attempted to force him to leave Nicaragua. Somoza refused and sought to maintain his power through the National Guard. At that point, the U.S. ambassador sent a cable to the White House saying it would be "ill-advised" to call off the bombing, because such an action would help the Sandinistas gain power. When ABC reporter Bill Stewart was executed by the National Guard, and graphic film of the killing was broadcast on American TV, the American public became more hostile to Somoza. In the end, President Carter refused Somoza further U.S. military aid, believing that the repressive nature of the government had led to popular support for the Sandinista uprising.
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