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Are the Sandinista terrorists on the Texas border yet? Rhetoric to haunt Freeepers.

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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 07:32 AM
Original message
Are the Sandinista terrorists on the Texas border yet? Rhetoric to haunt Freeepers.
Given ther current lies leading to war, an examination of past lies is in order. Please contribute past rhetoric that parallels the current propaganda effort.

One of my favorite whoppers is that the tiny nation of Nicaragua was an invasion threat to Texas. Reagan and George Bush deprived the nation and the world of sleep with rhetorical worries that the terrorist cabal controlling the government of Nicaraggua had to be militarily overthrown to prevent the invasion of Texas. REagan said Nicaragua, "is establishing a base camp for Cuban-Soviet aggression on the North American mainland."

Here is a speech quote of Ronald Reagan, the beloved former liar-in-chief:

"Believe me, the liberals in Washington know what's at stake in this election. They know that this may well be their last chance to steer American politics way over to the left. They know that if we Republicans do well this November it's going to permanently alter the political landscape. ...."

"You see, on holding down taxes and spending, on appointing tough judges, on keeping up our defenses and dealing firmly with the Soviets, the liberal Democrat leadership knows the fundamental differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are beginning to sink in with the average voter. Take another issue that's come to the fore recently, an issue where partisan politics shouldn't even play a role. All of you know that a Communist government has taken over in Nicaragua. In addition to engaging in widespread repression of human rights, this government is establishing a base camp for Cuban-Soviet aggression on the North American mainland. But today there are about 20,000 freedom fighters who need our help in restoring democracy to that country. And a few weeks ago we won a crucial vote in the House of Representatives that will help them to do just that.is establishing a base camp for Cuban-Soviet aggression on the North American mainland.

"...I think you know I've mentioned in the past that Nicaragua is only a 2-day drive from the Texas border. And since I'm here now, I can explain: Don't mistake my reference to the Texas border. The Communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua has made a lot of mistakes, but even they know better than to get themselves in a tangle with a bunch of Texans. Even with all the tanks and gunships from the Soviet Union, my guess is that the Sandinistas would make it about as far as the shopping center in Pecos before Roger Staubach came out of retirement -- -- teamed up with some off-duty Texas Rangers and the front four of the Dallas Cowboys, and pushed the Sandinistas down the river, out across the Gulf, and right back to Havana where they belong. Come to think of it, they don't even belong in Havana either, but don't get me started on that. But what's really at stake here is restoring our bipartisan consensus on national security issues. Believe me, you'll send that message to the liberals in Washington if you'll elect more Republican officeholders here in Texas. ..."
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/072386a.htm

=========

Next, from:

President Ronald Reagan and Nicaragua
excerpted from the book "Lying for Empire, How to Commit War Crimes With A Straight Face"
by David Model - Common Courage Press, 2005
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Reagan_Nicaragua_LFE.html

"Coolidge, a proponent of the interventionist interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, stated in an address to Congress in 1927 that:
I have the most conclusive evidence that arms and munitions in large quantities have been on special occasions.., shipped to the revolutionists in Nicaragua... I am sure it is not the desire of the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua or of any other Central American Republic. Nevertheless, it must be said, that we have a very definite and special interest in the maintenance of order and good government in Nicaragua at the present time .... The United States cannot, therefore, fail to view with deep concern any serious threat to stability and constitutional government in Nicaragua tending toward anarchy and jeopardizing American interests, especially if such a state of affairs is contributed or brought about by outside influence or by any foreign power. ..."

"The revolutionaries mentioned in the address were the Liberals, ... After negotiating with both the Liberals and Conservatives, Stimson achieved a peaceful settlement ... the agreement called for the stationing of American forces in Nicaragua to supervise the 1928 elections.
Sandino refused to sign the pact and denounced the U.S. for making Nicaragua an American protectorate. He organized an independent guerrilla force to wage war against the Nicaraguan government and the United States. American marines embarked on a six-year hunt for Sandino without success.
As American casualties increased in Nicaragua, the United States decided to withdraw the marines in 1933. ...."

======

Sound familiar? President Roosevelt said that "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

Three years later, Somoza took over the presidency with the assistance of the National Guard, establishing an oppressive, right-wing family dynasty which would rule Nicaragua for 43 years. Such was the result of US intervention to secure democracy in Nicaragua!!
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ck4829 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 07:35 AM
Response to Original message
1. "Immigrants have diseases"
They never specify which diseases and that meme sounds a bit fascist to boot as well.
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 07:51 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. Native Americans killed by European diseases was Chapter One.
More than 500 years later, Natives in the Americas are still resisting conquest and subjugation.

MORE from: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Reagan_Nicaragua_LFE.html

Nov. 1981: "Reagan authorized a covert plan for $19 million to help the Argentina dictatorship train a guerilla force operating from camps in Honduras to attack Nicaragua." (This is the same fascist Argentine regime that was disappearing their own citizens.)

"...the United States decided to create a surrogate guerilla force, feigning to be Nicaraguans, to rise up against the evil communist government in Managua. The alternative, an invasion by American forces, was ruled out for fear of a backlash from the American public who were not quite over the Vietnam War. The CIA covertly created a paramilitary force.... to confront Sandinistas but to blow up bridges, power plants, oil pipelines, ports, schools, health clinics, grain silos, irrigation projects, and farmhouses. ....."

"Witness For Peace, an American Protestant watchdog body, collected a list of Contra atrocities in one year, which include murder, the rape of two girls in their homes, torture of men, maiming of children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, amputating the genitals of people of both sexes, scraping the skin off the face, pouring acid on the face, breaking the toes and fingers of an 18 year old boy, and summary executions. These were the people Ronald Reagan called the "freedom fighters" and the "moral equivalent of our founding fathers."
The Contras were trained by the CIA in terrorist warfare and were provided with a manual of instruction which encouraged the use of violence against civilians. According to William Blum, in Killing Hope:
The CIA manual, entitled Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare gave advice on such niceties as political assassination, blackmailing ordinary citizens, mob violence, kidnapping, and blowing up public buildings. Upon entering a town, it said, "establish a public tribunal" where the guerillas can "shame, ridicule and humiliate" Sandinistas and their sympathizers by "shouting jeers and slogans"......"
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Blue Meany Donating Member (986 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 07:52 AM
Response to Original message
3. 2 Days' Drive from Texas?
I don't know what roads he's driving on to make in two days. It typically takes 5 days to drive to Guatemala from the US, driving in the daytime. If you drive at night you'll probably be stopped by armed bandits in Sonora, southern Mexico, or in the Guatemalan highlands. The busses don't travel at night in those areas. If I recall, it would take about a week by bus, which is how those nasty Sandanistas usually travel.
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NoPasaran Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 10:16 AM
Response to Reply #3
15. I remember when he said that
I remember when he said that and thinking that I wouldn't want to be a passenger if Reagan was driving!
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 08:17 AM
Response to Original message
4. President Reagan lied repeatedly to the American people and Congress
to conceal the covert atrocities of the Executive apparatus:

* He said Nicaragua was only two days from Brownsville, TX, inferring the Nicaraguan army intended to attack Texas.
* He said the Contras were Nicaraguan peasant rebels, rather than his hired mercenaries.
* He violated US law with continued funding the Contras after Congressional prohibition and lied by denying the covert funding.
* He lied about the elections in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
* He lied about Nicaragua's willingness to allow a team of inspectors to oversee the elections in 1984.
* He lied when he claimed that the Sandinista government was oppressing its own people.
* He lied about the sale of arms to Iran to buy weapons for the Contras.

"Nicaragua was a victim of ... the American obsession with creating client states in Latin America. ...whenever Latin American countries experimented with progressive reforms they were communist and a threat to American corporate interests. Then the mighty American military and intelligence machine jumped into action. Human rights and respect for the sovereignty and political independence of other states dropped off the radar screen. All that remained was American self-interest." (Same source as above.)

========

WE THE PEOPLE should be paying close attention to the covert operations being usd today to subvert the rise of liberal governments in Latin America and the covert assasination claims being made by Latin American leaders. Listen for the lies that we have heard all to often in the past. They are easy to recognize by study of past rhetoric.
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 08:20 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. Reagan Lies: Nicaragua sponsored terrorists in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and
Extra! October/November 1987

Managua—Terror Central?
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2480


"Reagan Reports New Latin Danger" was the headline of a front page New York Times article (1/25/85) in which the President defended his contra policy as "an act of self defense," citing a Sandinista terrorist link. Juan Tamayo of the Miami Herald (3/3/85) further developed the theme of Nicaragua as a terrorist haven, while a USA Today (7/9/85) photo spread, with head shots of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, Castro, Qadaffi and the Ayatollah Khomeini, graphically promoted Reagan's warning about "terrorist states" threatening the U.S.

An October 1986 OPD report, "The Challenge to Democracy in Central America," conveniently cited news articles on Nicaraguan state-sponsored terrorism based partly on its own leaks. This ploy was necessary because the U.S. government could offer no solid evidence of a Sandinista terror connection.

One of the few reporters who seriously analyzed an OPD White Paper, Washington Post correspondent Joanne Omang (7/23/85), found the charges against Nicaragua were baseless. But the story persisted with Reagan's proclamations that Nicaragua sponsored terrorist groups in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Official denials from each of these countries were ignored by Rushworth Kidder in a Christian Science Monitor article (5/14/86) which pegged Nicaragua as a "big offender" in a Soviet-backed world terrorist network. ....

....more...
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 08:28 AM
Response to Original message
6. "... international criminals, terrorists, arms merchants and kidnappers for ransom."
Sandinistas use terrorism to finance stale agenda - Fair Comment
Insight on the News, August 23, 1993 by Vincent Cannistraro
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n34_v9/ai_14466817

Rhetoric from "Insight on the News"

"A May 23 explosion in a Sandinista arms cache in Managua destroyed more than an arsenal of terrorist weapons and alias documents; it also exploded the left-wing myth that the Sandinistas are authentic revolutionaries. The ties that have been revealed -- with international criminals, terrorists, arms merchants and kidnappers for ransom -- have exposed a Marxist political party in the depths of moral and ideological bankruptcy."

....

"A partial list of terrorist organizations supported by the Sandinistas includes the Italian Red Brigades, the Basque ETA, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Cuban-sustained Latin terrorist groups such as M-19, MRTA, FARC, CNPZ, MPL and the Lautaro Youth Movement. There are others. During the years of Sandinista political control in Managua, virtually every radical Palestinian and anti-American terrorist group in the world had representation in Managua and could count on clandestine support from the government. ..."

...more BS....
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 08:33 AM
Response to Original message
7. Those Sandinista Terrorists!! Bushies crack down on academic terror.
Edited on Mon Mar-26-07 08:50 AM by L. Coyote
In the latest extension of the war on terror, the Bush administration has determined that "thought policing" is needed at Harvard. It seems they know better than Harvard who is qualified to teach Latin American history. No surprise given the family's criminal conduct in the region.

It was President George Bush who was in Tegucugalpa the morning when $100 million US taxpayer dollars changed hands to illegally aid the Contras, and the Challenger launch could not be cancelled. On that freezing morning in Florida, did the White House refuse to scrub the launch to avoid having the news cycle focus on the crime taking place in Honduras? Did the Challenger astronauts die because the war on those leftist terrorists threatening to invade Texas required criminal machinations under cover of, and at the same moment all the media was focused on, the would-be first teacher in space?

Here follows a recent article on keeping those horrid academic leftists out of the USA:

=======

Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Those Sandinista Terrorists!!
http://alterdestiny.blogspot.com/2005/03/those-sandinista-terrorists.html

After September 11, the Bush administration decided to crack down on the most nefarious terrorists in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, that's right--old members of the Sandinistas. For instance, just recently the United States denied entry to Sandinista and prominent historian of Latin America Dora Maria Tellez because of her supposed terrorist activities. That nutty left-wing institution Harvard had offered her a teaching position but the US government came to our rescue and saved our children from her terrorist training camp of a classroom. There have been several other Sandinistas denied entry to the US as well, despite the fact that they had visited the US multiple times in recent years.

This is of course absolutely absurd. The Sandinistas as much terrorists as I am. In 1979 they overthrew the extraordinarily oppressive and corrupt Somoza regime with their popular revolutionary movement. While they did not govern in a perfect manner, as if we should have expected them to, they did a lot for the people of Nicaragua. Unfortunately, they were undermined by a true terrorist organization, the US-sponsored Contras. By any reasonable definition of terrorism, the Contras were far more terrorist than the Sandinistas. It was the Contras who raped women. It was the Contras who led attacks on peaceful villagers. It was the Contras who were determined to terrorize the Nicaraguan countryside until the Sandinistas fell from power.

...more....
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 08:56 AM
Response to Original message
8. Bush nominee linked to Latin American terrorism
Bush nominee linked to Latin American terrorism
By Bill Vann - 24 November 2001
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/reic-n24.shtml

As the Bush administration exhorts governments throughout the world to line up behind its “war on terrorism,” it is pressuring the US Senate to push through confirmation of a nominee to a key foreign policy position whose own links to terror and an illegal CIA propaganda operation have raised concerns even among the usually docile Democratic leadership.

The name Otto Reich topped the list of 18 nominees submitted last month by Secretary of State Colin Powell. He is one of a group of veterans of the illegal covert wars fought by Washington in Central America under the Reagan administration in the 1980s who are now reassuming key posts in the US foreign policy establishment.

John Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras during that period, played a key role in supplying and supervising the CIA-backed “contra” mercenaries who were based in that country, and whose US-funded operations claimed 50,000 lives. During the same period, Honduran military death squads, operating with Washington support, assassinated hundreds of opponents of the US-backed regime.

Negroponte was quietly installed as US Ambassador to the United Nations just a week after the September 11 attack. The irony of appointing an individual so deeply implicated in savage acts of state-sponsored terror to serve as a principal spokesman for an international war on terrorism passed without notice in the US media.

... more ...
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 09:01 AM
Response to Reply #8
9. Powell indicated Nicaraguans connected to the World Trade Center bombings
Ominous threats from US against Nicaraguan Sandinistas
By Gerardo Nebbia - 25 October 2001
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/nica-o25.shtml

In the wake of September 11, the Bush administration is threatening the Nicaraguan people over the possible election victory of Daniel Ortega, On October 4, Secretary of State Colin Powell escalated US objections in a meeting with Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Francisco Sacasa. Powell indicated that five Nicaraguan passports had been found in the apartment of someone connected to the World Trade Center bombings, inferring that the FSLN might be connected to terror attacks.

Also on October 4, the US State Department issued a statement expressing “grave reservations” about the FSLN and charging the organization with links to terrorism. The next day, a State Department spokesperson delivered a speech at the University of Pittsburgh accusing three FSLN leaders, Thomas Borge, Lenin Cerna and Alvaro Baltonado, of having welcomed terrorists from the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.....

.... The Bush administration accuses the FSLN of having ties with “rogue” states, defined as those that sponsor terrorism—including Libya, Iraq, the Colombian FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces) and the ETA (Basque Revolutionary Army). ...

...more...
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 09:06 AM
Response to Original message
10. How Will Bush Make Nicaragua Pay for its Disobedience?
Sandinista! How Will Bush Make Nicaragua Pay for its Disobedience?

By Chris Floyd
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15538.htm

"Ortega ran and won with the backing of several prominent ex-Contras, including Jamie Morales, his own running mate. Morales had been the Contras' spokesman in Washington during the Reagan years when, with the direct involvement of VP George Bush, the Administration joined hands with the mullahs of Iran and the druglords of Central and South America to fund, arm and train a terrorist army to overthrow the Sandinista government. Although this exercise in mass state terrorism failed on the battlefield, the Reagan-Bush policy of economic terror managed to reduce Nicaragua to dire poverty, with the open threat that the stranglehold would go on until the Sandinistas were gone. ..."

...

"What will happen now? It's obvious: the Bush II administration -- which is clotted with many of the same Constitution-hating state terrorists who threw in with druglords and Islamic extremists during the Contra War -- has already announced its intention to resume the old economic terrorism against the wretchedly poor people of Nicaragua. ... They even sent Oliver North down to tour the country before the election.... "

"The only question remaining is whether the Iran-Contra criminal gang now restored to the White House will be content with economic sabatoge of the Nicaraguan government. After all, this time Ortega will have the backing of Venezeula's Hugo Chavez, who has promised cheap oil and other economic benefits to the Sandinistas. The Washington squeeze play won't be quite as effective this time around. So will they move on to more physical methods of destabilization? Will they sponsor another mass-murdering civil war? Or will it be confined to covert ops? After all, the great googily-moogily of American intelligence, John Negroponte, made his bones in the region during the Reagan-Bush reign of terror, operating out of Honduras as the United States spread war and repression across Central America."

... more.....
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 09:13 AM
Response to Original message
11. "Robert Gates, a man who helped orchestrate an illegal terrorist war ..."
Edited on Mon Mar-26-07 09:16 AM by L. Coyote
Getting a Grip | Sandinista Redux
by Michael I. Niman
http://artvoice.com/issues/v5n46/sandinista_redux

"The Bush administration just appointed Robert Gates, a man who helped orchestrate an illegal terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, as our new Secretary of Defense, replacing Donald Rumsfeld. The Nicaraguans, for their part, just returned the party and the president that our dirty little war ousted back to office. And they did this despite direct threats last month from the Bush administration, delivered by a convicted war criminal, who went to Nicaragua days before the election and told the Nicaraguan people that if such a victory occurred there’d be hell, literally, to pay. It’s not déjà vu—this is the story of a White House bent on world domination and a little democratic revolution that just won’t go away.

The last time I was in Nicaragua was 1989. Public transportation was crippled by an army of 15,000 US-backed terrorists with a penchant for blowing up or burning buses—sometimes full of passengers. Known as the Contras, they also crippled the nation’s electric system and regularly assassinated elected officials from the ruling democratic-socialist “Sandinista” party. ....

....

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. Using what later proved to be false and fabricated intelligence reports—sound familiar?—Reagan argued that the impoverished Central American country represented a military threat, and hence set out to wage an undeclared war against Nicaragua. The Reagan administration, with the help of the former Argentinean military junta, armed, trained and funded the Contras, a mercenary army led by former Nicaraguan National Guardsmen loyal to the ousted dictatorship.

The Contras combined amorality and ruthlessness with a smart strategy: defeat the Sandinistas by turning their country into hell on earth. The problem, as political theorist Noam Chomsky put it in his book, The Managua Lectures, was that Nicaragua posed “the threat of a good example.” If Nicaragua could oust its oppressive, US-backed government and effectively address problems of hunger, health care, education and political oppression, then why couldn’t, say, neighboring Honduras do the same thing? This was the real domino effect Reagan feared in Latin America—the one we’re seeing now ...

..... Twenty years after Reagan launched the Contra war, classified documents showing the roles of public figures such as the first President Bush were due to be released to the public. That all changed after September 11, 2001, when history itself was classified.

Then the ghosts from the Iran-Contra scandal started to reappear, haunting the new Bush White House. Elliot Abrams, pardoned by Bush Senior for his criminal activity in the Iran-Contra scandal, was appointed by Bush Junior as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council—the folks who wage covert wars.

Then there was John Negroponte, who, as ambassador to Honduras under Reagan, was the White House’s point man in the region, ultimately supervising the Contra terrorism in Nicaragua. George W. Bush appointed him as Director of National Intelligence, ostensibly managing our current dirty wars wherever they may be.

...more....
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 09:35 AM
Response to Original message
12. The same criminals may eventually return to power and destroy the Republic
Iran/Contra Terrorists twenty years later

Iran-contra: 20 Years Later and What It Means
From The Nation - David Corn
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2006/11/irancontra-terrorists-twenty-years.html

"It's the 20th anniversary of the Iran-contra scandal. Two decades ago, the public learned about the bizarre, Byzantine and (arguably) unconstitutional actions of high officials in the post-Watergate years. But many Americans did not absorb the key lesson: the Iran-contra vets were not to be trusted. Consequently, most of those officials went on to prosperous careers, with some even becoming part of the squad that has landed the United States in the current hellish mess in Iraq."

(Does this sound familiar?) "Conservatives for years--make that decades--have argued there was nothing really criminal about the Iran-contra affair and that it was merely a political dispute between the pro-contras Republicans in the White House and the Democrats controlling Congress...."

(Is there a parallel moment in an e-mail today?) "In a remarkable passage, Secretary of State George P. Shultz warns the president that White House adviser James Baker has said that "if we go out and try to get money from third countries, it is an impeachable offense." But Vice President George Bush argues the contrary: "How can anyone object to the US encouraging third parties to provide help to the anti-Sandinistas…?" "

(Iran has a lot of experience with American criminal politicos.) "The Iran arms-for-hostage-deal was also illegal--or so Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger thought. At a December 7, 1985 White House meeting, Weinberger argued the Iran missile deal was wrong and criminal, according to his notes of the session. Weinberger pointed out to Reagan that selling missiles to Iran would violate a U.S. embargo on arms sales to Iran and that even the president of the United States could not break this law. Nor, Weinberger added, would it be legal to use Israel as a cutout,..."

(Doing business with terrorists.) "On November 3, 1986, a Lebanese weekly revealed that the previous May National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane had secretly flown to Tehran. McFarlane's covert mission had been part of the arms-for-hostages deal--which now stood exposed."

(Here is the list of purps still doing the same old, same old.) "But history never ends. Twenty years later, Abrams is deputy national security adviser for global democracy in the George W. Bush administration. A fellow who admitted that he had not told Congress the truth and who had abetted a secret war ....

* Richard Cheney ... a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry of 1986, taking the position that Congress deserved major blame for asserting itself unjustifiably onto presidential turf....

* David Addington - now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff .....

* John Bolton - the controversial U.N. ambassador .... participated in meetings with Attorney General Edwin Meese on how to handle the burgeoning Iran-Contra political and legal scandal ....

* Robert M. Gates ... was forced to give up his bid to head the CIA in early 1987 because of suspicions about his role ...

* Manuchehr Ghorbanifar .... has resurfaced as an important source for the Pentagon on current Iranian affairs, again over CIA objections.

* Edwin Meese - currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group ... attorney general ... criticized as a political exercise in protecting the president rather than a genuine inquiry by the nation's top law enforcement officer.

* John Negroponte ... ambassador to Honduras ... Negroponte's profile has risen spectacularly with his appointments as ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005.

"As for the current relevance of Iran-contra, one could argue that the affair taught Reaganites and neocons a lesson, the wrong lesson: you can get away with it...."

=======

Perhaps that proved to be a mental trap. Especially if Congress has also learned its lesson: If you let them get away with it, the same criminals may eventually return to power and destroy the Republic with the same old rhetoric, lies, and crimes.
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 09:47 AM
Response to Original message
13. Argentinian armed forces killed over 30,000 civilian members of the country's political opposition
Edited on Mon Mar-26-07 09:48 AM by L. Coyote
Coming Soon to the US?
Plan Condor, the Sequel
By Toni Solo - Counterpunch.org
October 1, 2003
http://www.ccmep.org/2003_articles/General/100103_coming_soon_to_the_us.htm

"When Shimon Peres celebrated his 80th birthday on September 22nd, there at the top of the guest list, ahead of Bill Clinton ... was Carlos Bulgheroni. ... Bulgheroni and Peres had plenty to reminisce about. Israel and Argentina served as US proxies training terrorists in Central America through the 1970s and 1980s.

Argentinian death squad trainers based in Guatemala were reported to have masqueraded as Bridas (Bulgheroni's company) employees. During that time Peres served as Israel's Defence Minister, Prime Minister, deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister--well aware of Israeli military commitments in the Americas. Reviewing the background to US sponsored Argentinian and Israeli terrorism reveals how the fictional "war on terror" is just another pretext....

.... Three years after destroying democracy by instigating the military coup against Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, Henry Kissinger was in Santiago for a meeting of the Organization of American States. There he met the Argentinian military junta's foreign minister. According to Robert Hill, then U.S. Ambassador in Argentina, "Kissinger asked how long it would take ... to clean up the (terrorist) problem....Kissinger gave the Argentines the green light ... The Secretary wanted Argentina to finish its terrorist plan before year end." <2> Hill should know. It was he who served as intermediary between organizers of the Guatemalan death squads and leading figures in the Argentinian government.<3> ....

"...Between 1976 and 1983, under the military dictatorship, the Argentinian armed forces killed over 30,000 civilian members of the country's political opposition. Around 500 babies of women who gave birth in detention were distributed among their parents' murderers. In over 300 camps and detention centres, victims were tortured to death and then dumped in mass graves or flown out to be dropped into the Atlantic from military transport planes. Their property and goods were divided up among their torturers and murderers--over US$70m worth.... "

"... By 1975 Bush Sr. was head of the CIA and working together with Kissinger and Vernon Walters to develop Plan Condor--a coordinated operation against opposition movements throughout Latin America.<4> Plan Condor involved using illegal covert means such as the assassination team coordinated between the Chilean DIN security service and Miami Cuban terrorists ..."

"... It may seem strange now that Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte would have facilitated Argentinian fascists (who refined their torment of Jewish victims back in Buenos Aires by torturing them beneath portraits of Adolf Hitler). But Abrams and Negroponte did just that. Argentinian officers trained members of the Honduran army in techniques of mass repression while John Negroponte was ambassador in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa from 1981 to 1985. There he worked closely with Honduran armed forces chief Gustavo Alvarez Martinez to impose a "national security" state on the Argentine model--that is, a police state based on extra-judicial murder...."

MUCH MORE
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 10:09 AM
Response to Original message
14. "... rhetorical use of terrorism has a long prehistory...."
Terrorism to End Terrorism
by Sheldon Rampton
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q4/end_terror.html

Both internationally and in the United States, the "war against terrorism" has provided propaganda cover for crackdowns on human rights and civil liberties. Like other PR efforts to capitalize on the September 11 tragedy, this rhetorical use of terrorism has a long prehistory. As early as 1976, a media plan developed by the Burson-Marsteller PR firm advised Argentina's brutal military junta--then in the process of murdering thousands of Jews and leftists--to make over its image by "calling a meeting to examine terrorism and means of eliminating it," thereby identifying "Argentina as a member of a group of free world nations condemning all classes of terrorism," which "would immediately unite it with those countries which respect human rights and civil liberties."

....

The American Chemistry Council ... made the threat of terrorism the centerpiece of its own newly aggressive campaign to roll back "public right-to-know" policies that enable citizens to learn about toxic hazards in their communities.

.......

Many right-to-know rollbacks have focused on the Internet. Shortly after September 11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission completely shut down its website. The state of Pennsylvania has decided to remove environmental information from its site. Risk Management Plans, which provide information about the dangers of chemical accidents and how to prevent them, have been removed from the website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry dropped from its website a report on chemical site security which notes that "security at chemical plants ranged from fair to very poor" and that "security around chemical transportation assets ranged from poor to non-existent."

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has also issued a new statement of policy that encourages federal agencies to resist Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. .... The new Ashcroft doctrine rejects this "foreseeable harm" standard and instructs agencies to withhold information whenever there is a "sound legal basis" for doing so. "As with many of the Bush Administration's new restrictions on public information, the new policy is only peripherally related to the fight against terrorism," notes Secrecy News, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists. "Rather, it appears to exploit the current circumstances to advance a predisposition toward official secrecy."

The new climate in America prompted an eerily close-to-life parody in The Onion, a humorous newspaper that publishes satirical false news items. In the parody, Ashcroft is quoted saying, "We live in a land governed by plurality of opinion in an open electorate, but we are now under siege by adherents of a fundamentalist, totalitarian belief system that tolerates no dissent. Our most basic American values are threatened by an enemy opposed to everything for which our flag stands. That is why I call upon all Americans to submit to wiretaps, e-mail monitoring, and racial profiling. Now is not the time to allow simplistic, romantic notions of 'civil liberties' and 'equal protection under the law' to get in the way of our battle with the enemies of freedom."
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 10:17 AM
Response to Original message
16. "Ronald Reagan introduced "terrorism" into the political vernacular...."
An academic article on the use of the rhetorical _terrorism."

==============================
The Use and Abuse of Terrorism
Dr. Bernard L. Brock, Wayne State University
Published in The Michigan Citizen, Dec. 1, 2002.
Online at: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/commentary/brock1.htm

Over a year after the destruction of the World Trade Towers and following the Republican election victory and control over both houses of Congress, we can make some judgments regarding President Bush's use and abuse of the "War on Terrorism."

Terrorism, which means the "use of violence to intimidate or subjugate," has become a powerful, political umbrella tying together otherwise unrelated people and/or events. Then, when coupled with a "war" metaphor, terrorism becomes a powerful label uniting people to act emotionally and unthinkingly against a political enemy.

As late as 1980, The Readers' Guide, which indexes popular magazines such as Time, People and Atlantic Monthly, had no entry for the term "terrorism." Acts of violence, designed to intimidate or subjugate, were listed under either the people who committed them or the place where events took occurred, for example an IRA bombing would be entered either under IRA or Ireland or London.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan introduced "terrorism" into the political vernacular when he assigned this label to the legally elected, leftist Sandinista government. Then, he coined the term "Freedom Fighters" for the people supporting Samoza, an ousted, brutal dictator.

At the same time in El Salvador, Reagan reversed the labels and applied the term "terrorist" to the opposition against the oppressive Duarte regime he politically backed.

The labels "freedom fighter" and "terrorist," instead of designating the country's official government and its opposition, reflected Reagan's political attitudes -- his "friends" and "enemies." Reagan's use of these emotional labels mobilized public opinion without requiring him to explain in any detail why in one country he supported the legitimate government, and in the other he didn't.


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blogslut Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-26-07 10:26 AM
Response to Original message
17. Monsters
Remember kids, the real lie is this one: "We're spreading freedom and Democracy".

When they tell you that, run as fast as you can and get your community organized.

Here's what they really want: CHAOS

These big boys don't want a world full of democratic nations. Democratic nations are autonomous and fully in charge of their resources. Autonomous nations can't be controlled or bought off as easily as warring factions or greedy Tyrants.
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