As for Oliver North, he should have never been pardoned. Ask your friend about Barry Seal and Oliver North. Ask him if he has ever heard of Mena, Arkansas. Ask him if he knows about the deaths of Don Henry and Kevin Ives. Also, ask him if he has ever read Oliver North's declassified noteobooks.
That you haven't a clue as to geopolitic and wondering how you sat on your screen name for a whole year.
How come you left out North's participation in the capture of the terrorists who took over the Kili Lauro (sp)? I should think that the North/US response to the terrorists i.e. capturing them in less than 24 hours, would and did put the fear of God into terrorists everywhere.
I also note that your post never considers traits like patriotism, integrity, guts, and character which North and Reagan possessed in huge quantities.
Congress passed the "Boland Amendment" stipulating NO APPROPRIATED FUNDS COULD BE EXPENDED TO AID THE CONTRAs. Obviously, the Democrats preferred Danny Ortega and the Communist Sandanistas over any elected government ... especially one that would favor freedoms for people. Granted, some of the Contras weren't nice people, but then again many of the people willing to fight against the Communists are not likely to be candidates for the Vienna Choir.
Oliver North was looking for a way to LEGALLY aid the Contras. Unlike Clinton, who didn't know the meaning of "is" ... North recognized that he could not route U.S. money to the Contras ... per the probably unconstitutional Boland Amendment. So he looked for "legal loopholes". Israel sold arms to the Iranians for a stiff markup, and part of the money went to buy replacement hardware, and the profits went to aid the Contras. Not what Congress wanted, but all within the letter of the law.
The Independent Counsel spent about $110 Million trying to find guilty parties ... and came up with a dry hole. The IC was found to have done many wrong things, and the few convictions that he got were overturned on appeal. (Contrast this to IC Ken Starr's record of more than a dozen convictions and many plea bargins ... and a sitting Governor, plus other high level officials were among those caught. The only thing that kept Clinton (actually, both Hillary AND Bill) for being indicted for various crimes was the understanding that in Washington, D.C, the "jury nullification" by an "OJ TYPE" jury would likely happen.
You asked what we got ... for one, we kept the balance of terror between Iran and Iraq fairly balanced. Better that they fight each other than to fight us.
And Ollie managed to get some assistance and vital funding to assist the Contras ... and that forced Danny Ortega to gamble that he would win elections, and he got trounced. Nicaragua threw out the communists, much to the disgust of Democrats in the U.S. and other communist sympathizers everywhere! This success helped undermine the Soviet Union, which had the "Brezhnev doctrine" of "Once a Communist State, Always a Communist State." Under the Reagan watch, Grenada fell out of the Communist Axis of Evil, then Nicaragua. And of course, Reagan aided the Afghan freedom fighters who sought to force the Soviets out of their country ... and the Soviets left near the end of the 80's. .. another loss Soviets, another "nail in the coffin" for the Soviets (remember Reagan's early claim about how the Soviets would end up in the dustbin of history?? He was right!!).
Hostage taking hasn't been a big issue since the 80's - and if we are looking for a loss of moral standing in the world, we only need look at the many crimes of the Clinton administration ... which gave military and high tech secrets to China for campaign contributions, ignored many terrorist actions which lead to 9/11. Clinton "ran" from Haiti when a Navy ship approached a dock that had protestors on the pier. Clinton cut and ran when the Somali's killed the 18 Army men. Clinton promised action when terrorists tried to topple the World Trade Center in 1993, and after many other terrorist actions. He did respond with expensive cruise missiles - either at a real medical plant (not the "nerve gas facility" he claimed it was), or the $10 mud huts in Afghanistan. Those strikes typically occurred when some Monica testimony or release of information "harmful" to his Presidency might occur. (a true "wag-the-dog" scenario). The blowing up of the Sudan "aspirin factory" was truly harmful to the nation's reputation. Clinton was hitting the wrong target, killing innocent civilians, all to distract from Monica testimony. And you think what Reagan did was harmful? Tell your friend to get his head out of his rectal cavity, and he might smell roses rather than his own mental excrement!!! And the view is better ... and maybe he might learn something .. but I doubt it. Anyone who could put the 6 points he put together is obviously one who is a true communist .. tell a lie often enough and maybe someone will believe it ... maybe even the one who is telling it.
Mike
The principal argument being made is that Iran-Contra broke the law. The specific law was the Boland Amendment (there were six versions of it), an attempt by the legislative branch to infringe on the president's role in foreign policy and as commander-in-chief. The Boland Amendment was patently unconstitutional, but rather than spend years litigating the issue, the executive branch ignored it.
That the means were unsavory is typical of covert operations...these aren't choir boys, and it was incontestable that the Sandinistas were a Soviet puppet government. The ends justified the means.
Unfortunately, the results weren't that great, except for the demise of the Sandinista government. What is most interesting is that the Iran-Contra critics happen to be the greatest apologists for the Soviets, and have always been anti-U.S. military.
For those who think our actions in Nicaragua were wrong, I recommend a ticket for the Ben Linder Express Train. Hop on Board!
Linder was a long-haired hippy who tried to stop a Contra munitions train by laying across the track. His fellow leftists filmed the incident. Unfortunately for Ben, the train didn't stop, and Ben no longer has a leg to stand on. (literally).
yeah,why not ,blame it all to oliver north and reagan,if i was north,would have sold the weapons too.
Ask the moron you have been discussing this with if the law that he contends was broken was the Boland Amendment (this is the law that purported to prevent the Reagan administration from aiding the Contras). Pin the knucklehead down on this because this is at the heart of the Iran-Contra witch hunt.
The conduct of foreign affairs has always been the exclusive domain of the executive branch and yet during the 1980s the socialists in this country tried to legislate foreign policy by passing the Boland Amendment. The problem though with the Boland Amendment (aside from being unconstitutional) is that it never provided for any criminal penalties if it was violated, which is why no-one (including Oliver North) was ever charged with violating the Boland Amendment.
Lawrence Walsh knew that he couldn't make any case stick for violating the Boland Amendment, which is why he went around trying to indict people like Caspar Weinberger for not turning over evidence like diaries that Caspar had already turned over to the Library of Congress. Put simply, the conduct of the Democrats in the Iran-Contra affair was despicable. All Ollie was trying to do was get people freed from Lebanon while at the same time helping the anti-communists out in Nicaragua. Only a leftist could even think to turn something like that into a 'constitutional crisis'
1. Bill Clinton broke a UN arms embargo on the country on Yugoslavia. It shipped $800 million in arms through a secret CIA front company through the country of Iran. The illegal arms went to the radical Muslims in Bosnia, some of the same people we are now fighting in our war against terrorism. See: U.S. ACTIONS REGARDING IRANIAN AND OTHER ARMS TRANSFERS TO THE BOSNIAN ARMY, 1994-1995 OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE
2. Milosevic did not take any hostages. The three soldiers he captured has crossed the Macedonia border into Yugoslavia. Even though we were technically not at war, they were prisoners of war. Who is to say a deal was not made for there release?
3. Clinton did irreparable harm to NATO when he declared war on Yugoslavia. He forced NATO to violate its charter because Article Five says “... an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all... ” No NATO country was in any jeopardy. And you can debunk the myth that the two previous World Wars started there by the fact the World War One would have started anyway with or without the assignation of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Germany wanted a piece of the domination of the seas because that was how Great Britain was able to control large numbers of its territories around the world.
4. What did we get in return for Bill Clinton giving Muslims weapons to commit war? I think we saw it on 9/11. Clinton’s inability to deal with these terrorists that he once supported has left us with a war full of terrorist. Too bad he never acted like Bush who said, "I'm gonna be patient, about this thing, and not go firing a 2 million dollar missile at a 10 dollar tent just to hit a camel in the butt".
5. See number 4 above. When we had the chance to take out bin Laden, Clinton’s State Department notifies Pakistan of the oncoming attack. Our buddies the Pakistani’s notify bin Laden to get the hell out of there before the missiles hit.
6. Who knows if Reagan knew he was lying. Bill Clinton he lost his ability to practice law because of his conviction of lying in a civil rights trial. Clinton may have lied over the arms transfers to Bosnia, but even if he did, the Republicans never had the balls to convict him.
If you want more details Benny, write back. I'd be glad to help.