Iran-Contra's Lost Chapter

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/30/9992/

I think this story belongs here because it connects in so many ways with the Coup D'etat Of 11-22-63

[John Simkin]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/30/9992/

I think this story belongs here because it connects in so many ways with the Coup D'etat Of 11-22-63

Great article. I also believe the assassination of JFK is connected to Iran-Contra. I tried to show here but have not had time to finish it. Hopefully, I will get time to do it later:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

[Pat Speer]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/30/9992/

I think this story belongs here because it connects in so many ways with the Coup D'etat Of 11-22-63

Great article. I also believe the assassination of JFK is connected to Iran-Contra. I tried to show here but have not had time to finish it. Hopefully, I will get time to do it later:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

I read the missing chapter yesterday and agree that this is an important development. The Republicans on the committee allowed the report to reveal many bits damaging to Reagan and his legacy, but (from what I can recall) they successfully kept under lids that North's network of Contra lobbyists were simultaneously engaging in domestic political activities, targeting Democrats against his pro-Contra policy. While the report claims the money wasn't mixed, it is undoubtedly disturbing that the Federal government, under Reagan, transferred a CIA employee with Psy-ops and propaganda background, to a domestic position, to help build domestic support for a specific policy. He then helped orchestrate a media campaign against specific Democrats, targeting Democrats close to Washington D.C. so that his campaign would have a spill-over effect. Even worse, the money for these activities came from private donors, and the men hired by North to collect this money, unbeknownst to the donors, were allowed to pocket huge sums.

This represents everything that is wrong in American politics today. You have privatization of government activities in order to avoid accountability. You have greed and inefficiency--with these lobbyists pocketing much of the money. And you have the government using propaganda techniques against its own people as part of the "permanent campaign" to push the President's agenda that Scott McClellan--and the rest of America--finds so distasteful. The President is NOT a king. Sometimes congress can tell him NO. Sometimes he is supposed to listen to the 435 elected representatives to congress, who are supposed to take action when the guy in the White House is WRONG.

If Clinton had moved CIA assets around to push his foreign policy to the public, and had NSA stooges directing networks of lobbyists running around the country to fund a private army, and had sold American military equipment to a sworn enemy in order to raise funds to fight a war against a nation that had never attacked the U.S., in direct defiance of a congressional ban on such funding, the Congress and his own party would have called for his head. While Uncle Ron may have been a nice guy face to face, his lust for absolute power infected Dick Cheney, and has led us to the current situation. Cheney, we should recall, was put in the position of defending Reagan's lust as "executive privilege" while on the committee investigating Reagan's crimes. He asserted then, and apparently convinced himself, that the President has sole authority when it comes to protecting the United States, and that ANY effort by congress to rein in his absolute authority is to be disregarded.

When a country has been run for 8 years by a man with a less than 20% approval rating, and a less than 35% approval rating within his own party, can you call that country a democracy? I don't think so.