Does the delay in getting the deal done remind anyone of the Iranian Hostage Crisis

[soleft]

Just in that, as I understand it, Reagan or his minions were somehow able to suspend the hostage release until after the elections to damage Carter and then make himself look like a hero.

So the element of throwing wrenches into the process to stretch it out to the benefit of one party, recalled for me what Reagan did back in '80.

Have the Democrats every used this delaying strategy?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. I don't know about that.....................

The Americans had absolutely NO leverage with the Iranians, so your theory that Reagan and company held the hostages until after the inauguration (NOT the elections) fails. Those people didn't care what we tried; they thwarted us. They just wanted Carter out, I think.

The hostages were released only minutes - as I recall it - after Reagan was sworn in. It was seen as a swipe at Carter, and, of course, his handling of the crisis contributed to his defeat.

There was no "delaying strategy" during that time. People just didn't know what to do.

[soleft]

2. It was allegedly the original October Surprise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. If you trust Wikipedia to give you accurate information

about contemporary American history, you're going to get a lot of misinformation. Like this.

Check the date on which the hostages were released.

[FSogol]

4. You're wrong. Reagan delayed their release in an arms for hostage deal.

Stop defending Reagan. He was scum from top to bottom.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

5. I agree that he was scum,

but that tired old conspiracy theory has been floating around for almost thirty years, and, frankly, there's no proof that it ever happened. It's just nonsense.

[FSogol]

6. How about having a copy of Carter's debate book?

That a theory also?

[riverdeep]

7. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

All the official versions say it didn't happen. However...

On Jan. 11, 1993, Russia's Supreme Soviet sent a secret cable to the U.S. Congress. The cable claimed that Russian national security files held evidence that two U.S. Presidents and two CIA directors had committed an act of treachery with Iran's radical Islamic government in 1980.

To the shock of the task force, the six-page Russian report stated, as fact, that Casey, George Bush and other Republicans had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980 presidential campaign. The Russians depicted the hostage negotiations that year as a two-way competition between the Carter White House and the Reagan campaign to outbid one another for Iran's cooperation on the hostages. The Russians asserted that the Reagan team had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations after all, the exact opposite of the task force conclusion.

"After the victory of R. Reagan in the election, in early 1981, a secret agreement was reached in London in accord with which Iran released the American hostages, and the U.S. continued to supply arms, spares and military supplies for the Iranian army," the report continued. The deliveries were carried out by Israel, often through private arms dealers, the Russians said. Spares for F-14 fighters and other military equipment went to Iran from Israel in March-April 1981 and the arms pipeline kept flowing into the mid-1980s.

Instead, the Russians considered their report "a bomb" and "couldn't believe it was ignored," the official said. Not only did the House task force keep the extraordinary Russian report secret, it ended up in a cardboard box among hundreds of documents, some unclassified and others "secret." The document boxes were piled, ingloriously, on the floor of a former Ladies' Room which had been converted into storage space, deep inside a parking garage of the Rayburn House Office Building.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile1.html