On Iran Contra

[Elok]

Okay, is anybody here aware of how Iran-Contra was actually "a good thing?" A few weeks ago I started an argument about politics that I didn't finish (as I was drunk and knew I'd offend the nice Republican from church if I kept it up), in which it was claimed that, despite media lies, Iran Contra was utterly heroic on Reagan's part or something. I don't know the eighties that well (I was six when they ended), but I seem to recall IC involving the administration selling missiles to a nutty theocracy in order to fund Central American rebels of some sort. And that most of the proceedings involved various people scrambling to avoid accountability rather than defend their actions. Did I get the wrong story about IC, or what?

[Kuciwalker]

You were probably talking to Ned and didn't know it.

[Admiral]

I just love how the US was supplying arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war.

On other other hand, Ann Coulter does consider Oliver North to be her hero.

[Dinner]

It's amazing how the political right has been so successful white washing Reagan's crimes in Iran-Contra. The Republicans never had a great leader type of president the way the Democrats could point to FDR or Kennedy so they're trying to rehabilitate Reagan's image so that he can become "the great Republican president". The problem is Reagan really was a bumbling incompetant who made deals with the Iranian mullahs to keep the hostages longers (Reagan wanted the hostages to not be freed because it was a big election issue for him), he helped bloody murderers in Central America transport and sell drugs to the US (Reagan thought that was ok just as long as the murderers, er.. Rebels, kept killing communists when they weren't busy shooting old ladies and hanging journalist), illegally sold weapons to Iran, and generally was a terrible economic manager (massive deficits as far as the eye can see).

[Kidlicious]

If Ned doesn't participate in this thread then you are dealing with a serious nut Elok.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Yup, the White House armed an avowedly anti-American nutjob theocracy in order to also arm facist terrorists, all in knowing defiance of a federal law that specifically barred it from doing so. By the time it was all over, the National Security Advisor had attempted suicide; Reagan, deciding that the buck never, ever stops with him, famously declared that "mistakes were made"; and Ollie North was a celebrity.

Trust an old man: nothing good came of it. It was, in all respects, a worse scandal than Watergate.

[loinburger]

Good lord, this guy already lost a life?

[Elok]

Well, I was specifically looking for conservative arguments in favor of it. Just morbid curiosity, I can't imagine how it could be anything but a disgrace. Now where's Fez/Ned/whoever when you need 'em?

[Dis]

If the rebels had actually been doing something useful, maybe some good could have came of it. And giving weapons to Iran was not a good idea. But it's better than when we downed their jetliner. .

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Elok
Well, I was specifically looking for conservative arguments in favor of it. Just morbid curiosity, I can't imagine how it could be anything but a disgrace. Now where's Fez/Ned/whoever when you need 'em?

Hell, I'll give you the four conservative arguments in favor of it:

1) In fighting communism (which is how conservatives characterized Nicaragua's reasonably-democratically-elected socialist government), the ends justify the means.

2) A strong country requires a strong executive; defying those spineless Democratic wimps in Congress was actually patriotic.

3) Reagan is never wrong.

4) Iran-Contra was actually a test case to see whether the president could use the public's ignorance and apathy, coupled with the media's laziness, to give himself a free hand in foreign affairs. The answer, a resounding "yes," set the stage for the curent administrations's follies.

I think that about covers it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Reagan is never wrong.

Teh Reagan

[Kidlicious]

That damn Clinton and his ****ing surplus ruined this country.

[Dis]

that wasn't it. It was the under oval desk affairs that ruined this country. We were a moral country until then.

[Richelieu]

Yeah. Who has ever heard of smoking a cigar after sex? What a sick, deranged, depraved leader.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Kidicious
That damn Clinton and his ****ing surplus ruined this country.

Damn straight. Everyone knows that when your economy is booming under an existing income tax regime, not changing those taxes is in fact sucking money out of the economy and single handedly causing thousands of dot com corporations to produce nothing. The only logical solution, then, is to never stop cutting taxes. Ever. If you get to a point where the government is mailing you a check for three times your income each month, so much the better.