Was the Iran-Contra affair a massive hoax designed to coverup the

[KlatooBNikto]

involvement of Bush Sr. and Bill Casey in the drug trade to finance a parallel government hidden from the prying eyes of Congress?Remember when Maxine Waters of California proposed exactly that idea she was derided by the media just as much as Cynthia McKinney was in 2001 after the WTC Towers collapse.Gary Sick, the NSC staffer who investigated the sudden appearance of crack cocaine in the streets of LA was also "disappeared" by the media despite his credentials.

[VivaKerry]

1. A hoax?

I hardly think so. A scandal of huge proportions, that never did see the light of day in the justice realm. And a cast of players who are actively enjoying their work in the bush 2 regime. (Negroponte...head of iraa btw).

And yes, the interference in central america was a way to increase trafficking drugs to the USA. One of the benefits for the american thugs.

but a hoax? I wish.

[izzie]

2. I do not think so. I think it was just what it seemed.

A group trying to do as the President wanted and going around congress. Some also were padding their own bank accounts.

[tinanator]

3. there certainly was a coverup/whitewash

when Democrats ruled the Senate and House, they refused to disclose the factual smoking gun information about GHWB's treason in keeping US hostages in Iran. Everything that followed is a result of that action. EVERYTHING. Does anyone think a Bush could win office if the general public knew that poppy paid millions to extend the captivity of Americans?

[G_j]

4. not a hoax, a cover-up

they refused to get to the bottom of it and drugs were a central component. If they had, Daddy Bush and others would be in jail and today's political landscape would be completely different.
Perhaps the BFEE could have been derailed. ...they blew it (on purpose)..

[noonwitch]

5. It was not a hoax, it was a scheme to get around congress

Congress would not allow military troops to be used in Nicauragua. Reagan wanted to fund the contras, because they were allegedly fighting the communist Sandinistas. Unfortunately, the contras turned out to be drug dealing, nun-murdering terrorists. Reagan was undeterred-that was in the days when "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" was the mentality. Reagan and his cronies thought that they could use terrorists to fight communism, and never considered that once those terrorists had defeated the communists, they might turn on their sponsors.

On top of that, while declaring a "War on Drugs" that was actually a war on drug users, the Reagan administration pushed into law higher penalties for drug offenses. At the same time, they were instructing federal law enforcement to look the other way when the contras smuggled cocaine into the country. These allegations were strongly denied by the Reagan administration and not proven during the hearings, but were later substantiated.

The other part of this was that the Reagan administration also sold arms to Iran, a nation who had held our diplomats hostage for over a year, and kicked the money back to the contras. Selling weapons to the very people who funded the terror attack on our marines in Beruit, and selling weapons to the enemy of our ally, Israel.

[ArkDem]

7. What happened to the Sandinistas?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. They were bankrupted by being forced to fight a defensive war

with few resources. The Nicaraguan economy, never too strong to begin with, was absolutely shattered. Their initial efforts to spread education, health care, and infrastructure development to the largely subsistence farmer population, were set aside.

Still, they hung on until the 1990, when it was time for elections. (The Sandinistas were influenced by Marxism, but they weren't typical "Communists"--they had a lot of priests and nuns on their side, much to the dismay of the Pope) The Bush Sr. administration hinted loudly that the Contra war would stop if the Nicaraguans voted "the right way."

At that point, the Nicaraguan people voted the Sandinistas out.

Since then, Nicaragua has been a favored location for sweatshops.

[ArkDem]

17. Oh, they lost an election.

[bobbyboucher]

18. And you trust that?

You should just vote for W and save yourself the trouble of thinking.

[ArkDem]

20. Wow, you know more about what I'm thinking than I do myself!

Are you psychic? Anyway, I am in awe of your perceptive power!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Technically, they did lose an election, but only after

Bush Sr. made it clear that he would keep funding the Contras until the Nicaraguans voted the "right" way.

I remember a radio report the day after the election, in which the reporter was marveling about how depressed everyone seemed. If the Sandinistas were such tyrants, as the Reagan/Bush admins liked to claim, people should have been happy.

The report implied that the mood in Managua was like that of a business person who has been forced to "donate" to a gangster.

[ArkDem]

25. Why didn't they run again?

[Make7]

26. It actually looks like they have a chance to win the next one. n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. They have, but they haven't been able to win the majority they need

under a parliamentary system. However, they have been doing better in recent years.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

29. He probably did vote for W

[RainDog]

6. the "parallel govt"

was what made Iran/Contra possible.

North testified and his questioner was prohibited from following a line of questioning about the camps in America which were previously built to intern Americans who opposed invasions of other countries...from blacks to opposition to funding for the contras.

The San Jose Mercury News and Robert Parry were marginalized for reporting truths about Iran/Contra and drug running organized by Republicans at the highest levels of power.

when the big newspapers had to retract their attacks, they buried the information in their back pages.

the "official" story of Iran/Contra is mostly lies to protect the powerful. sort of like the torture issue now.

the American govt is a rogue nation, a situation that coincided with the recruitment of Nazis after WW2.

Check out Reinhard Gehlen. Operation Paperclip.

He was a Nazi who overestimated the threat of the Soviets that formed the basis of our entire cold war policy...including Iran/Contra.

Check out all the nazis that were in Latin America, and, as Robert Parry reported, those who assisted Reagan in Central America, including Klaus Barbie.

America made a deal with the devil and we've all paid the price.

[Liberaltarian]

8. Correction...

"America made a deal with the devil and we've all paid the price."

we've nowhere near 'paid the price'...yet.

[seemslikeadream]

10. Nazis and the Republican Party

A Fresh Look
by Carla Binion
Nazis and the Republican Party
Investigative reporter Christopher Simpson says in BLOWBACK that after World War II, Nazi émigrés were
given CIA subsidies to build a far-right-wing power base in the U.S. These Nazis assumed prominent positions
in the Republican Party's "ethnic outreach committees." Simpson documents the fact that these Nazis did not
come to America as individuals but as part of organized groups with fascist political agendas.

snip

Simpson shows how the State Department and the CIA put high-ranking Nazis on the intelligence payroll "for
their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare," among other purposes. The most important Nazi
employed by the U.S. was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's most senior eastern front military intelligence officer. After
Germany's defeat became certain, Gehlen offered the U.S. certain concessions in exchange for his own
protection. Gehlen promoted hyped up cold war propaganda on behalf of the political right in this country, and
helped shape U.S. perceptions of the cold war.


Journalist Russ Bellant (OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY) shows that
Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Nazi war collaborator, built the Republican émigré network. Pasztor, who served as
adviser to Republican Paul Weyrich, belonged to the Hungarian Arrow Cross, a group that helped liquidate
Hungary's Jews. Pasztor was founding chairman of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.


Two months before the November 1988 presidential election, a small newspaper, Washington Jewish Week,
disclosed that a coalition for the Bush campaign included a number of outspoken Nazis and anti-Semites. The
article prompted six leaders of Bush's coalition to resign.
According to Russ Bellant, Nazi collaborators involved in the Republican Party included:
1.Radi Slavoff, GOP Heritage Council's executive director, and head of "Bulgarians for Bush." Slavoff was a
member of a Bulgarian fascist group, and he put together an event in Washington honoring Holocaust
denier, Austin App.
2.Florian Galdau, director of GOP outreach efforts among Romanians, and head of "Romanians for Bush."
Galdau was once an Iron Guard recruiter, and he defended convicted Nazi war criminal Valerian Trifa.
3.Nicholas Nazarenko, leader of a Cossack GOP ethnic unit. Nazarenko was an ex-Waffen SS officer.
4.Method Balco, GOP activist. Balco organized yearly memorials for a Nazi puppet regime.
5.Walter Melianovich, head of the GOP's Byelorussian unit. Melianovich worked closely with many Nazi
groups.
6.Bohdan Fedorak, leader of "Ukrainians for Bush." Fedorak headed a Nazi group involved in anti-Jewish
wartime pogroms.

more

http://www.bartcop.com/nazigop.htm

[Just Me]

19. One of these days, I gonna get that book, "Blowback".

It's really weird how the most extreme, corrupt and greedy elements of this country have combined forces. I keep thinking that there just has to be a fall-out among them at some point.

[bossfish]

28. It is an interesting book...

...reads pretty quickly.

If you had doubts about the "military-industrial-(banking)" complex, those doubts would likely disappear.

[cincinnati_liberal]

24. Bob Fitrakis

FLUKES, NUKES, & NAZIS

Get it online. Columbus, Ohio. Columbus Free Press.
I know the man personally, he's a genius. He's written half the Ohio election articles on the net. The book details the Nazi connections to Bush and the Repukes.

[Razorback_Democrat]

9. Well the folks in Mena, Arkansas might have something to add

I don't live in Mena, but not far from there.

The story goes that the airstrip there was used for smuggling cocaine in the Iran Contra affair. Barry Seal (who died in a plane crash I believe) was a pilot. Bill Clinton was governor and certainly there was no effort to investigate the strange reports coming out of Mena.

I don't know if this means that this really happened this way, but something illicit and well protected was happening at Mena in the '80's

[Lost Creek]

12. Barry was killed by Columbians working for US interest

google it

[chicagiana]

22. jurisdiction ...

An investigation of that scale would fall to the FBI and DEA. The fact that the CIA was running the drugs should tell you WHY there wasn't an investigation.

The Pukes are experts at turning lemons into lemonades. The Mena issue had Poppies' fingerprints all over it. But they pinned it on Bill Clinton because he just happened to be the governor.

That's like blaming Ronald Reagan for all the Cocaine coming into California in the 70s.

[H2O Man]

11. Interesting topic.

The Iran-Contra sacandal(s) should have played an important role in the national debate during the 2004 campaign. Most Americans do not have a good grasp of what was actually involved, which is reflected in your question. The number of people in this administration who were involved in the series of criminal actions that occured in those years is staggering.

But, to answer your question, it's a lot like saying was Watergate a distraction to keep people from recognizing Nixon was a crook.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I always preferred the explanation that said that the crack epidemic

was a means of defusing black political militancy. Get as many young people drug addicted or thrown into prison as possible.

[JHB]

15. You're confusing two people: Gary Sick vs. Gary Webb

Both brought up "old news" about buried Reagan-era scandals during Poppy Bush's and Clinton's administrations:

Gary Sick was the Carter NSC staffer who was the "go to" guy about Iran during the embassy hostage crisis. He didn't believe stories of Republican attempts to cut a deal with the Iranians (the convenient timing of the release he considered to be Iranian spitefulness against Carter, which they were fully capapble of, rather than being evidence of Reaganite interference, and reports of contacts that he'd heard lacked credibility) for years, until the late 80s when he found what he considered credible evidence of contact between Iranian and Reagan campaign operatives, and wanted the matter reopened.

Gary Webb was a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News who revived the story about connections between cocaine traffic and the network supporting the Contras in his "Dark Alliance" series in 1996. He lost his job at the SJMNews thanks to Bush/conservative pressure against companies whose reporters dug too deeply against them.

Both men generated new inquiries at the congressional level, but in both instances the results were spun into the ground as "nothing to see here, move along". Some of us around here consider these hearings to be two more glaring examples of Democratic officialdom's spinelessness which has let the Republicans get to the point where they are now.

On Edit: corrected the timeframes: Webb's series ran during the Clinton years.

[KlatooBNikto]

16. I stand corrected.Thanks.

[cincinnati_liberal]

23. Don't Confuse Coincidence With Circumstance!!!!!!!!!!

The Bush Sr. CIA drug trade going on in the central Americas had everything to do with Iran-Contra. Open a few history books and see what I mean. The drug involvement came due to the U.S. supporting war lords like Manuel Noriega. THEY WERE THE CONTRAS. Eve heard of School of the Americas? It's where they trained the assholes. The money Reagan laundered went to the Contras aka merc armies to start revolutions against the Communists. We paid drug dealers to fight our war. No coincidence. Cold hard circumstance.