The US made Nicaragua a utopia. The same will happen in Iraq. Honest.

[Karmadillo]

Sure our war against the Sandanistas was expensive and we took some hits as a result of our terror attacks against women and children and schools and health clinics, but look at all the good we've brought about since then. One can only imagine how impoverished the country would be today if the crazy commie efforts to direct resources towards the general population had been allowed to continue uncontested. Why can't the Iraqis realize we can bring about genuinely positive results like the ones listed below if only they'd put away their guns and their hate and their suspicions? The only wise course is to step aside and let the US do its job, the only job that matters, the job of bringing freedom and prosperity to all countries.

http://www.witnessforpeace.org/nicaragua/ataglance.html

General Social Statistics:
· Over half of the population is under 16 years of age.
· 80% of the population lives in poverty, 17% in extreme poverty (Independent analysts estimate 90 percent poverty).
· Nicaragua is the third poorest country in the hemisphere, after Haiti and Guatemala.
· Women head 34% of urban homes and 17% of rural homes.
· 32% of homes in Managua have no electricity, in the Atlantic Coast regions 17%
· Nicaragua has the highest tax rates in Central America (including a 15% sales tax)
· From 1993 to 2001 the number of child workers grew by 400%. 43% of these do not attend school and 60% are illiterate.

External Debt:
· In 2001: $6.5 billion (about $1,400 per Nicaraguan)
· Annual payments: $225 million
· Debt is three times the Gross Domestic Product, the highest debt in Central America and the highest per capita in Latin America
· Average per capita income: about $430 a year
· Nicaragua became one of the 41 members of the Highly Indepted Poor Countries Initiative by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund

Education:
· 34% of Nicaraguans are illiterate, in rural areas this is 46%
· The national average for years of schooling is only 3.5 years
· Over half of school-age children do not (cannot) attend class
· Six of every 10 urban children go to school, one of every 10 rual children go to school
· Only 12 of every 100 Nicaraguan youths attends university

Health:
· Maternal mortality is 200 per 100,000 live births, one of the highest in the hemisphere (compared to less than 10 per 100,000 live births in the USA). 60% of maternal deaths occur outside hospitals.
· Nicaragua has the highest adolescent pregnancy rate in Central America.
· Life expectancy is 68 years.
· One of three children is malnourished.
· More than two thirds of Nicaraguan children under four have iron deficiencies.
· More than half the deaths of children under four are caused by preventable diseases (diarrhea, pnuemonia, malnutrition etc).

more...

[teamster633]

1. All courtesy of St. Ronnie of Reagan.

My theology is a little rusty but since Reagan was only a saint and now we have a leader with a direct line to the almighty we ought to be able to expect even greater miracles, no?

[FreakinDJ]

3. We were in Nicaragua in 1977

forming opposition parties and rebels

[Karmadillo]

4. Our policy in Nicaragua was bipartisan. The altruism that led to the

impressive achievement reflected in the statistics in the Witness for Peace summary is a credit to both parties.

[noiretextatique]

2. ain't our brand of 'democracy' for people who don't look like us

(as the idiot squatter said) GRAND :eyes:

[kentuck]

5. But they have democracy and "freedom"...

right?

[Vladimir]

6. I bet they have consensus in government though!

</sarcasm>

[Zuni]

7. Nicaraguans voted the Sandanistas out

in 1989, by a landslide.
I don't think Ortega and his band of merry communists were great leaders either. The people were sick of them.
Look at all the good communism did in Russia, China or Ethiopia. It didn't work there and would not work in Nicaragua.

[Karmadillo]

11. I imagine Nicaraguans hoped voting out the Sandinistas

would convince the United States to leave them alone. As the statistics indicate, it worked. We've left them alone to endure the tender mercies of the IMF and structural adjustment and other rites of passage on the road to utopia, all of it certainly better than what they would have suffered under the evil Ortega et al. USA! USA! USA!

By the way, last I checked (not lately, so please correct me if I'm wrong), the Sandinistas made significant progress in improving Nicaragua's standard of living when compared to the results achieved by the Somozas, our faithful dictatorial corrupt ultrawealthy allies. And if "communism" wouldn't have worked in Nicaragua (though we'll never know since our sincerest intent was to make sure, at whatever cost, it didn't), I would guess the statistics Witness for Peace has compiled fairly convincingly indicate capitalism doesn't work either. Strange how the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands doesn't seem to bother the lovers of freedom in the White House anywhere near as much as attempts to redistribute it to those in need.

[Zuni]

17. 'would convince the US to leave them alone'

Yep, everyone loved Ortega and his heavy handed dictatorship, including former Sandanistas who now fought in the Contra movement. Almost 25% of the Contras were former Sandanistas (about the same number as former Somoza soldiers, who by 1989-1990 were mostly gone from the Contras, having been internally purged), including one of the most famous Sandanistas, Eden Pastora.
They objected to forcible seizures of property, forced relocation, assaults on the Catholic church and others. Many of the Contras were Miskito Indians, almost completely evicted from their traditional coastal areas.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. It was in 1990 and

only after Bush Sr. hinted strongly that the Contras would be called off if the Nicaraguans voted "correctly."

This was after the 1986 election, which the Reaganites insisted on delaying so that their handpicked candidate, who was the father of Fawn Hall's boyfriend and who had not lived in Nicaragua for 14 years, could "have a fair chance." He lost, so the Reaganites started complaining about cheating, despite assurances from international observers.

And that was after the 1982 election, which the Reaganites pretended didn't exist, because the Sandinistas got 69% of the vote. In the lead-up to the 1986 election, Eliot Abrams (convicted criminal, now in the Bush Jr. administration) was going on TV and telling everyone that Nicaragua had NEVER had an election.

I remember the NPR report from the day after the 1990 election. The anchors in Washington obviously wanted the correspondent in Managua to report that the Nicaraguans were dancing in the streets, but she insisted that they were just walking around looking shell-shocked.

The Sandinistas never got a chance to show what they could do, because they were under constant attack funded by the most powerful country in the world as soon as Reagan got into office. Everything they tried to do for the people, such as building water and electrical systems and opening public health clinics, was sabotaged by the Contras.

Of course the Sandinistas weren't perfect, but they were the first government in the history of Nicaragua ever to even try to do something for the common people.

I was in the anti-intervention movement in the 1980s, and I know that the American people were fed a lot of lies, most of them concocted by Otto Reich, John Negroponte, and Eliot Abrams (notorious names, all of them) during that period.

It's too bad that you still believe them.

[Zuni]

18. It is too bad you believe all of the left wing misinfo

The Contras were not just Somocitas drafted by Reagan. They were, by an overwhelming majority farmers, Indians who objected to being forced off their land by Communist land seizure policy. Almost all of the Miskito Indian population was herded into internment zones. Only about 1 quarter of the Contras ever served in Somoza led forces, with a similar amount of former Sandanistas also in the Contras. The vast majority were ordinary Nicaraguans who had their property seized.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Good lord! What a post. I'd love to hope someone could rub their noses

in this disaster they've created.

Meanwhile, Reaganites can toss their hats in the air, as THEY WON! Wowie!

I'm going to study this article, as I've never seen anything like it, not having seen Haiti's and Guatemala's. My, we've really done wonders, haven't we?

Thank you very, very much.

[0007]

9. I think John Negroponte can take much of the credit for how wonderful

Nicaragua is today.

[lanparty]

10. Even better ...

Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Iran (pre-shaw), etc...

BTW, Negroponte is one evil mother fucker. He may be going to Iraq now, but it's just a pit stop to hell.

[Nederland]

13. This would be far more effective

...if the data included an idea of what things were like before. As it stands, its just a list of stats on a fairly poor country. You cannot know whether or not things have gotten better since the Sandanistas were thrown out of power. For all I know, it might have even been worse under Ortega. This site needs some serious work if it wants to actually prove a point...

[noiretextatique]

14. perhaps it's better to look at iraq

before our intervention.

[Nederland]

15. Excellent Idea

I wonder if BuchCo is censoring that kind of data...

[Judi Lynn]

16. You have to wonder what kind of a chance they really had

with American interests being the overriding authority since the early 1900's or late 1800's. Jeezus H. This story has been repeated all over the continent, but it's very keen in Nicaragua, isn't it?

A quick search would be a real benefit to anyone looking for more info. on Nicaragua's past, in case he/she has to ask what conditions have been there PRIOR to our devastating embargo. Here's some quick info. I just caught immediately in google:

From 1945 to 1960, the U.S.-owned Nicaraguan Long Leaf Pine Company (NIPCO) directly paid the Somoza family millions of dollars in exchange for favorable trade terms, such as not having to re-forest clear-cut areas. By 1961, NIPCO had cut all of the commercially viable coastal pines in northeast Nicaragua. Expansion of cotton plantations in the 1950s and cattle ranches in the 1960s forced peasant families from the areas they had farmed for decades. Some were forced by the National Guard to relocate into colonization projects in the rain forest. Some moved eastward into the hills, where they cleared forests in order to plant crops. Soil erosion forced them, however, to abandon their land and move deeper into the rain forest. Cattle ranchers claimed the abandoned land. Peasants and ranchers continued this movement deep into the rain forest. By the early 1970s, Nicaragua had become the United States' top beef supplier. The beef supported fast-food chains and pet food production. Six Miami, Florida meat-packing plants and the largest slaughterhouse in Nicaragua were all owned by Anastasio Somoza Debayle (whom had inherited the family's power when his older brother Luis Somoza Debayle died of a heart attack).

Also in the 1950s and 1960s, 40% of all U.S. pesticide exports went to Central America. Nicaragua and its neighbors widely used compounds banned in the U.S., such as DDT, endrin, dieldrin and lindane. In a later study (1977) it was revealed that mothers living in Leon had 45 times more DDT in their breast milk than the World Health Organization deemed safe.
(snip)

U.S. pressure also took the form of attacks on Nicaraguan ports and oil installations (September 1983-March 1984) and the laying of magnetic mines outside Nicaraguan harbours (early 1984), actions condemned as illegal (June 27, 1986) by the International Court of Justice. The U.S. refused to pay restitution and simply claimed that the ICJ was not competent for the case. The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in order to pressure the U.S. to pay the fine. But although only Israel and El Salvador, which had also disputes with Nicaragua, voted with the U.S., the money still has not been paid. Cf. Nicaragua v. United States On May 1, 1985 the U.S. imposed a complete economic embargo, which remained in force until March 1990.

Due to the murder of the young American engineer Ben Linder in 1987 by the Contras and the growing distaste in the US for the dirty war in Nicaragua, the US Congress finally prohibited further direct aid to the Contras, but Administration officials attempted to supply them out of the proceeds of arms sales to Iran, triggering the Iran-Contra Affair of 1986-87. Mutual exhaustion, Contra splits and mediation by other regional governments led to the Sapoa ceasefire between Sandinistas and Contras (March 23, 1988) and subsequent agreements (February, August 1989) for Contra re-integration into Nicaraguan society preparatory to general elections.
(snip)

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/History-of-Nicaragua


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nicaragua had a special experience of the United States in its history. A liberal president had been elected in 1893 who refused to obey US demands so in 1912 the US Marines invaded, assassinated the president and ruled as an occupying force until 1933. A guerrilla resistance movement under Augusto Sandino had fought and survived against 25,000 Marines, but after the Marines finally left, Sandino was assassinated and Nicaragua experienced the brutal 20-year dictatorship of the Somoza family. Later, a popular uprising of Nicaraguans against the last of the Somozas under a guerrilla movement called the "Sandinistas" after Sandino brought in a moderate socialist government in 1979, and started a program of "land reform" redistributing the unused land of the American United Fruit Company to the landless peasants. This was a frightening prospect for American commercial interests in Latin America, so to stop such a precedent the US government supplied, trained and armed an army of local people in Honduras and Costa Rica known as the "Contras" to attack the democratic regime in Nicaragua. To help them the US navy blockaded the ports, mined the harbours, embargoed all trade with Nicaragua, and literally starved the country into submission. The US, however, did not technically "invade". Today Nicaragua, the country that fought hardest against their occupation, is an economic "basket case".
(snip)

http://www.canadianactivist.com/centralamerica.htm

[redqueen]

19. War is a Racket

Anyone still not clear on that?

:grr: