Need help on Iran-Contra affair...

[RadicalSon2]

Fellow freepers...could use some help here. My liberal friends keep bringing up the Iran-Contra affair as if their was a illegal cover-up by the Reagon administration. I need to know what really happened. Could you guys give me a hand with this. Thanks.

[cricket]

. . .in light of your 'RS2'name; hesitate to ask if you have checked into David Horowitz's archives (Frontpage Mag.com)re Iran Contra; believe he tackles that pretty well.

Hope that is helpful :^)

[mathluv]

Anne covered it in Treason. The dim legislature would not vote on funding to fight against communism, so private sources paid for arms - thro Iran, I believe.

[VRW Conspirator]

My liberal friends keep bringing up the Iran-Contra affair as if their was a illegal cover-up by the Reagon administration.

1) They are not really your friends.
2) They are using a version of the "everyone does it" defense to protect Bill and Hillary.
3) To Libs, it is not whether Reagan covered up or participated in Iran-Contra, it is the seriousness of the charge
4) 2 and 3 are done to silence you, to get you stammering, to choke the message that you want to deliver- do not let them silence you.

Take whatever tact you want to, but, IMHO, you should remind them that Bill Clinton is a monster. He raped woman, sold our most precious secrets for next to nothing, lied under oath, abused his powers and sentenced to death a man who was mentally incompetent to stand trial, as governor of Arkansas. Then ask them how Billy boy compares to Ronald Reagan.

[dix]

I have the same advise that Cricket gave you.

[Paleo Conservative]

Iran Contra would have never happened if the congressional districts had not been so heavily gerrmandered to favor DemocRATS. The left wing DemocRATS used the power within the DemocRAT caucus to pass the Boland amendment. If Congressional representation were roughly proportional to voting strength, the Boland amendment would have never been approved.

[NeoCaveman]

Ask your liberal friends why the Democrats in the 1980's sided with the Marxist Sandanistas and why there party's leadership has never apologized for it.

[anncoulteriscool]

Just my opinion...i was only 25 or so at the time so I had other things on my mind other than politics...but Reagan at the time was in hospital with colon cancer plus you had a CIA director that was dying of brain tumors. Some very zealous understudies such as Oliver North and others thought they were making contacts with people in iran who were moderates so we thought we'd help them but those people turned out not to be what we thought they were. Liberals believe all they have to say is "iran contra iran contra iran contra" and that ends the conversation of whether reagan was a great president or not. Reagan was the greatest president of my life time and we should all thank God he was our president. It would be a much different world without him.

Peggy Noonan in her book "When Character was King" has an excellent chapter on this. I would recommend that for your reading.

[Bullish]

Remind your liberal "friends" that an independent council investigated Reagans role in Iran Contra for 5 years and reported that he could find NO WRONG DOING BY PRESIDENT REAGAN.

If I remember correctly, Walsh was a democrat.

[GiveEmDubya]

""2 and 3 are done to silence you, to get you stammering, to choke the message that you want to deliver- do not let them silence you.""

Agree completely. Once they are confronted with facts, be prepared for the discussion to take a turn for the ugly. Whatever you do, do not let them get you angry and do not let them drag you down to their intellectual level.

I read a book on Reagan a few years ago and it had plenty of Iran-Contra info...but I don't remember much about it other than the Dems wanted to use the affair as an excuse to impeach Reagan.

[Billthedrill]

Very basically, there were American citizens being held hostage by Hezbollah, who were and are connected to the Iranian government.

Congress had passed legislation to prohibit U.S. government aid to the Contra organization fighting the Sandanista government in Nicaragua.

A group led by Ollie North maneuvered a sale of missiles that Iran wanted (this was during the Iran/Iraq war). In return they used their influence to get the hostages released.

In the meantime, North's group (Cap Weinberger and John Poindexter were accused of involvement in this or at least having knowledge) transfered portions of the money from the missile sale to the Contra organization.

Complications in this very twisted affair included accusations that cocaine was involved in return for that money, that the group was acting under orders from Reagan officials or Reagan himself, that the CIA knew or didn't know, that private drug dealers knew or didn't know - it gets so convoluted from there I'll let you read about it elsewhere.

A couple of political issues involved were the propriety of Congress to direct foreign policy in this manner and the propriety of NSC officials to direct foreign policy matters at all. Juicy stuff.

Good luck in your argument, but don't expect to convince a True Believer of anything.

[Enterprise]

What exactly do you mean by illegal behavior??

[Enterprise]

Well, life and politics surely do take strange turns don't they? The United States backed Iraq, initially, in its war against Iran. Then, when it appeared that Iraq would actually defeat Iran, the United States supported Iran. In light of recent events, would you have preferred that the United States let Iraq defeat Iran?

[Billthedrill]

It doesn't sound much like Reagan at all - for one thing, it's way too complicated, and I mean that in a nice way. I suspect some second-echelon dabblers in realpolitik figured they'd continue to play the Iranians and the Iraqis off against one another - remember, this was 1986 when it still looked like the Iraqis might succeed in toppling the mullahs, but contrary to some late assertions in the press we weren't all that shot with Saddam either. We didn't want him to destroy Iran, many of the Iranians were our friends before Khomeini and still are.

I think if they'd stuck at that - the hostages were released, after all - it might have been held to be dirty but forgivable. But somebody at the NSC, or wherever - details are dim - got cute, and decided to play a little destabilization game in Nicaragua as well. This is one of those where the cost-benefit analysis wasn't looked at real closely - the money involved didn't really hurt the Sandanistas any and the cost of being caught (as they were - by Ed Meese, of all people) should have told adults that it was a crackpot idea. But this is all very clear in hindsight, and it may well be that it wasn't so clear at the moment.

[Zeroisanumber]

Bob Woodard covers this topic in Shadow: Five Presidents Under the Shadow of Watergate in a thourough and well-balanced way. Woodard lays out the facts of the case and interviews many of the principal players involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. His principal argument in the book was that time and again Special Prosecutors became too wrapped up in the politics of the beltway to be effective investigators, and that the Iran-Contra affair is no exception.

Less clinical analysis can be found at any number of left and right-themed websites around the net, if you're just looking to score cheap points you can pick your flavor.

[chuckwalla]

It wasn't just a sale of missles to Iran but to the more moderate members in order to secure a friendlier gov when the current one changed. The Soviets wanted Iran also and the missle sale was to thwart their influence. Pretty wise it seems as terrorism seems to have been born there.
The contras were fighting the Soviet takeover of the only other country in the isthmus where a canal could be built. Also the soviets would be able to fly recon\intel and or bomber flights up the west coast of the U.S. Something they could not do from Cuba.
The boland ammendment attempted to restrict the power of the executive branch to conduct foreign policy.
The dems got some small political victory while sacrificing future security.