Dancing to Ollie's Tune

[Wells]

Will the Democrats blow it again as they did in 1986?
by Greg Grandin

A Republican Party on the ropes, bloodied by a mid-second-term scandal; a resurrected Democratic opposition, sure it can capitalize on public outrage to prove that it is still, in the American heart of hearts, the majority party. But before House Democrats start divvying up committee assignments and convening special investigations, they should consider that they've been here before, and things didn't turn out exactly the way they hoped.

It was twenty years ago this November 3rd - exactly one day after the Democrats regained control of the Senate after six years in the minority - that the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reported on the Reagan administration's secret, high-tech missile sale to Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran, which violated an arms embargo against that country and contradicted President Ronald Reagan's personal pledge never to deal with governments that sponsored terrorism.

................

But just a year after the hearings, Iran-Contra was a dead issue. When Congress released its final report on the matter in November 1988, Reagan breezily dismissed it. "They labored," he said, "and brought forth a mouse." Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected president despite being implicated in the scandal.

..................

Other Iran-Contra notables who have resurfaced in recent years include , Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, John Poindexter, Michael Ledeen, even Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian arms dealer who brokered one of the first missile sales to the Khomeini regime.

Unleashing the Imperial Presidency: But if the Democrats failed to gain political traction with the scandal, or wring a parable out of it, others did far better. Dick Cheney today points to Iran-Contra not as a cautionary tale against unchecked executive power but as a blueprint for how to obtain it.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1018-32.htm

This article seems to me very much an important read, especially when the same indicted, convicted and pardoned players of Iran/Contra have earned promotion in Bushcorp. I'm keeping a printed copy.

[blm]

1. There were many unresolved matters in IranContra that could have been

pursued if the DC powers that be had a will to pursue them.

In Clinton's book MY LIFE, he says he didn't pursue the outstanding issues because he wanted Bush to have a peaceful retirement.

It's funny how alot of IranContra articles are popping up lately. So many in DC want it to be a buried issue. That and BCCI and CIA drugrunning. As if it never happened.

[ShortnFiery]

2. Sorry - this is a dupe :(

Here's the original within this forum: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x241105