Quotes: A Nation Reacts (Danny Glover's still bitter about his firing from MCI)

FOX News ^ | 6/6/04

[Stultis]

Yes, correct. There was a backlash (at least in "flyover" country) against against the Iran-Contra scandal mongering. As the ramrod straight marine, defying the carping, finger-pointing congress critters, Ollie became a focal point for much of that feeling.

Again, I woulda rather had someone less flamboyant but more experienced with running a covert operation. (And who could, ferchrissake, at least get the right account number to the Sultan of Brunei!)

Ollie became a hero due to this posturing on his part. (I don't mean that entirely negatively. Ollie's posture was certainly much better than that of the 'Rats questioning him.) It's just that, IMHO, there are so many others who have a greater claim -- wrt bringing freedom to Central America -- to the heroism conferred on Ollie. Elliot Abrams, for instance, who was left entirely out of the Iran-Contra loop, but took much of the heat anyway (and never bitched or complained, or engaged in any sort of CYA maneuver, then or since) and who was mislead by Ollie and others, I strongly suspect, on other matters that were under his purview.

Speaking very generally, it was Abrams that lead the way in building a truly broad and popular movement behind the Contras, and transforming the Contras themselves from the semi-private militias of a few generals into a true "peasant army," and it was this that helped to lay the groundwork for the eventual defeat of the Sandinistas. Abrams, while working closely with Ollie and the CIA, was also somewhat working against their tendency to favor their existing relationships with the Contra generals, and therefor oppose the numerical expansion and political broadening of the movement.

[NoClones]

I'd fire him too, after all the vitriol he has been spewing - the wife & I boycott all his movies on account of that!

[Yardstick]

transforming the Contras themselves from the semi-private militias of a few generals into a true "peasant army," and it was this that helped to lay the groundwork for the eventual defeat of the Sandinistas.

What was the nature of this defeat? I know the Sandinistas were eventually defeated politically through elections, but I take it that this was made possible by the peasant army you mention, which implies a military defeat -- or the possibility of military defeat -- of some sort. To what extent was the Sandanistas' political defeat predicated on a military defeat? Were they defeated on the battlefield (so to speak), or was it that the gathering of a formidable peasant army, with the political and ideological solidarity that must have come with that, tipped the balace politically against them, so that an actual military defeat wasn't required?

Also, I've seen it claimed a million times that the CIA was involved in the Central-American drug trade -- laundering money, protecting the turf of drug lords, that sort of thing. How much truth is there to this? IIRC these were never proven in the investigations undertaken by our government. Even so, is there enough proof that they did actually occur that their occurance should be accepted as a premise when Iran-Contra is debated? Or is the reality of these things confined mainly to the Mother Jones crowd.