Ex-Nicaragua Leader Voices Saddam Support

[Rose Siding]

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Saddam Hussein still has at least one friend abroad: Former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega expressed support for the ousted Iraqi leader, saying Friday it would be a "barbarity" to force him to stand trial under U.S. occupation.

Ortega, the leader of the Soviet-backed Sandinista government that governed Nicaragua in the 1980s, said a trial for Saddam would only be appropriate if Iraqis overthrew him.

"We maintain our solidarity with the Iraqi people and with Saddam Hussein, who continues to be the president of Iraq," Ortega said. "A barbarity is being committed because he is being judged by a government of occupation headed by a Yankee."

U.S. officials have said they will turn Saddam over to Iraqi authorities for trial, but have not said when that would take place or what charges he would face.

Ortega's Sandinista government fought a civil war against Contra rebels trained and supported by the CIA. Since losing a 1990 election, the former president has veered between fierce criticism of the United States and attempts to improve relations.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-nicaragua-saddam,0,501761.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[IndianaGreen]

1. I couldn't find this story in the Nicaraguan press

Neither La Prensa nor El Nuevo Diario has this story (although El Nuevo Diario has an interesting article about how the Vatican was bribed, in the form of a loan to the Vatican Bank, to expedite the canonization of Father José María Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei).

I don't trust US sources, they tend to misquote Latin American leaders, particularly those that displease the US government. I clearly recall seeing and hearing then-President of Panama Manuel Noriega refer to American provocations as a form of declaration of war against Panama. The American press misquoted Noriega, on purpose no doubt, tellin the gullible American public that Noriega had declared war on the US. President Bush invaded Panama shortly after that.

From the fragments of Ortega's quotes, it seems to me that he is referring to the fact that it is up to a sovereign Iraq to determine what to do about Saddam, and not the US or its lackeys like Chalabi.

Nicaragua suffered greatly at the hands of American aggression during the drooling idiot Reagan's Administration.

[0007]

8. Hail hail the gangs all here! "White House Revives Iran-Contra Memories"

June 6, 2001 in the Guardian of London
A few things have changed from this article. John Negroponte finally got to be the ambassador to the UN,

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0606-03.htm

[alwynsw]

2. Yup. Noriega's astellar charachter.

Sorry, but his endorsement means little to me given his track record.

[Rose Siding]

3. Who, Noriega or Ortega? n/t

[Pocho]

9. I AND MANY CONSIDER HIM TO BE

Perhaps we consider different sources of information than those fed to you.

[0007]

10. What ever "astellar" mean!

Is meanlingless when Noriega and senior Bush use to hold hands.

[IndianaGreen]

4. This article is part of the US smear campaign against the Sandinistas

Jeb Bush went to Managua with a suitcase full of cash for the anti-Sandinista candidate. Otto Reich spent some time in Nicaragua as well. How would Americans react if Iran were to give money to a US Presidential candidate?

Notice how rightwingers everywhere borrow from Karl Rove's lexicon to smear their liberal opponents.

The Miami Herald
October 20, 2001
Terrorism a top issue in Nicaragua election

BY FRANCES ROBLES

MANAGUA -- Talk of poverty, jobs and corruption has been shoved aside in Nicaragua's presidential election and replaced with terrorism -- a hot topic designed to derail the comeback hopes of former leftist President Daniel Ortega.

Perhaps uniquely among Latin American countries, the Sept. 11 attack on the twin towers has become a crucial campaign issue here. It has forced Ortega, the candidate of the Sandinista Front, to confront a legacy of his party's 11-year rule: making Nicaragua a safe haven for terrorists and radicals.

``After President Bush said you are either on his side or the other side, the truth is that candidate Ortega is on the other side,'' said Alejandro Fiallos, spokesman for

Ortega's opponent, Liberal Party candidate Enrique Bolaños. ``He's for Moammar Gadhafi, Fidel Castro, bin Laden and all those other people.''

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/nicaragua/nica-election.htm

[Judi Lynn]

5. So much of what we have been told, or given to read was crafted

by that slimey bag of putrescence, Cuban "exile," Otto Reich. I'm sure you know all about this, but this is simply vile beyond words:

(snip) For many senior politicos in the Reagan Administration, Nicaragua was a black and white issue. If you weren't pro-Contra and anti-Sandinista, you were a dupe of two malevolent forces: What one senior official euphemistically called "the source" of evil in this hemisphere -- Cuba -- and the power behind Cuba that then Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey held was the center of all world terrorism and subversion: the Soviet Union.

John Lantigua's reporting didn't reflect such a Manichean worldview, and for that, the Administration would try to smear him and others who didn't "come on-side." In a "report" produced by the far-right "media watchdog" group Accuracy in Media, Daniel James -- identified only as a "Latin America expert," but, in fact, a longtime CIA contract propagandist -- reported that, according to unnamed U.S. government officials, Lantigua was being furnished with live-in female Sandinista sex slaves in exchange for penning Sandinista agitprop.

To those who covered Central America, the charges were absurd: Not only was Lantigua living with his American fiancée, but he was in the middle of a freeze-out by the Sandinistas, who, along with the Reagan Administration, sometimes found Lantigua's reporting to be inconvenient. Lantigua got a kick out of the item, assuming that it had originated with Otto Reich, a particularly ideological State Department official who Lantigua and his Newsday colleague Morris Thompson had met for lunch when Reich had made a brief visit to Managua. (Both Lantigua and Thompson remember the lunch as an unhappy experience for Reich: Thompson recalls Reich "loudly announcing things as fact about the Sandinistas' actions and polices that in fact were not true," which, Lantigua says, prompted a polite but persistent Thompson to "do a verbal tap dance on the guy.")

A few weeks later, Sharon Churcher, then New York Magazine's Intelligencer columnist, confirmed Lantigua's suspicions, revealing that Reich, described as "the administration's point man for Latin America," was "questioning the patriotism of reporters who don't toe the official line." This time, however, Reich went on-the-record, citing "defectors from the Sandinista government" as his sources for the sex slaves item. Characterizing the life of the Managua reporters as "sordid," he also added -- in what seemed to be a swipe at Thompson, who is gay -- that "for gay reporters, there are Sandinista men."
(snip/...)

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/05/vest-j-05-25.html

It's a shame to assume what we've learned via any of Reich's propaganda spew or spew-tainted foreign sources could even resemble the truth of Nicaragua's struggles.

Otto

[durutti]

6. Not surprising.

n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Maybe it's just that Ortega knows what it's like to be

on the receiving end of U.S.-sponsored aggression.

:shrug: