How Reagan Convinced Himself He Didn’t Sell Arms for Hostages

Daily Beast ^ | 01-28-2023 | Philip Taubman

[ChicagoConservative27]

Shocking news about secret arms-for-hostage deals rocked Washing­ton in late 1986. The first hint came with a White House announcement on November 2, that David Jacobsen, an American held hostage in Lebanon by Iranian-directed Islamic forces, had been released. As Secretary of State George Shultz read a draft White House statement about the development, he noted that it referred to freed “hostages,” with the “s” crossed out. That told him that the White House had expected Jacobsen would not be alone. Shultz suspected that the news meant that clandestine White House efforts to free captive Americans in the Middle East by send­ing arms via Israel to Iran might be responsible. He had first heard about the possibility in mid-1985.

Within a few weeks, the dimensions of the story expanded exponen­tially with word that some Iranian payments for American arms had been secretly diverted to the rebel Contra forces in Nicaragua that Washington hoped would topple the leftist Sandinista regime. The funding was in clear violation of a congressional cutoff of aid to the Contras. Overnight, the affair, quickly dubbed the Iran-Contra scandal, engulfed the White House.

[TakebackGOP]

This was before my time, but I find it hard to understand the big deal.

[Conservative4Life]

Xiden is doing it too.

The whole Iran-Contra thing is completely misreported and unfactual. Much more was at stake and numerous other things were going on. But the big 3 networks had an agenda.

[Paal Gulli]

"For the lesser evil can be seen in comparison with the greater evil as a good, since this lesser evil is preferable to the greater one, and whatever preferable is good"

-- Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics

[Paal Gulli]

"...The whole Iran-Contra thing is completely misreported and unfactual....

American interventionism in the region (and Boss Ray-Gun's in particular) deserves part of the credit, not only for the Nicaraguan-backed insurgencies in El Salvador and Honduras failing, but also for the deposition of Marxist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in 1990 and his replacement with the legitimately democratically-elected Violeta Chamorro.

Blame for Nicaragua's president no longer being democratically-elected, and Ortega's return to power, is largely the result of subsequent administrations lacking the "cojones" to do a little evil in order to prevent a greater one.