a scratch pad for half-formed thoughts by a liberal political junkie who's nobody special. ''Hard Heads, Soft Hearts'' is the title of a book by Princeton economist Alan Blinder, and tends to be a favorite motto of neoliberals, especially liberal economists.
mobile
email

 
the following passage was not written by me.
the handle of the guy who wrote it is tedzep, and his
email is tedzep98@excite.com

Its an analogy of what Iran-Contra would have been
like if it had happened in the Clinton administration,
which thus brings home very effectively how bad
Iran-Contra really was, and how penny-ante the stuff
the Clinton Administration is being charged with is in
comparison.

I think its worthy of publication, but at the very
least it should strengthen your desire not to join the
lynch mob currently tarring and feathering the
Clintons as uniquely brazen, corrupt and "feloniously
gauche":

"You know, it's really hard nowadays to understand
what Iran-Contra meant, just on the basis of the
charges before Congress and Walsh(if we don't
consider, as Walsh could not, the allegations of the
Cocaine trafficking, the US subsidized atrocities by
Contras, the Propaganda apparatus "Project Truth",
possibly using hostages as bargaining chips, links to
the October Surprise (did it start the deal?)--and
then later hostages in Iran-Contra had their releases
planned to impact elections).

But I think I can understand it's magnitude by doing
an hypothetical by substituting present day figures,
and nations in a somewhat similar position relative to
the US.

Imagine if our guy and his VP sold arms(for hostages
or just hard cash) to Saddam Hussein.

Now imagine if they used swiss bank accounts, the CIA,
ad hoc agencies, think tanks, private funding, funding
from foreign sources to finance these operations.

That one of the Iraqi(not a US citizen even) middlemen
in the arms deal was allowed to represent the US solo
like a "Secretary of the State for a day" in a meeting
with the highest leaders of the Iraq government.

And now imagine if this Administration turned around,
allowed the middlemen and others to pocket some of the
profits from their huge mark-ups, and diverted the
rest to fund a private war in Kosovo that the current
Congress expressly forbade(including the sale of arms
to Iraq).

Then imagine that once the Iraq-KLA scheme was
exposed, their Attorney General didn't immediately
seal the offices of the principals and gave everybody
lots of time to shred documents, cover their tracks
and coordinate their lies.

Then imagine that everyone, damn near everyone of the
players called before Congress blatantly lied and
dissembled about the whole "Iraq-KLA Affair".

And that the President would continue to lie on TV
about it's intent and his knowledge. And the VP and
Pres. candidate obstinately proclaimed to his last
breath that he was "out of the loop". Despite future
disclosures of hard evidence to the contrary proved
that to be perhaps the biggest public lie ever
committed by an eventual President. Then, after he
lost his re-election bid, he pardoned all of the
remaining conspirators
in a last ditch effort in the cover-up.

Do you think that the GOP would have been so
considerate as the Dems were back then about not
wanting to impeach and scandalize a popular sitting
President? Would they have allowed a rush to judgement
by the Congressional hearings with the goal of not
impeaching, and thus tainted the later criminal
prosecution.

Would the Media have looked the other way, and the
WH/CIA propaganda machine allowed to paint it all
white.

Jesus y Maria--now I really get how heinous
Iran-Contra really was!

And that's even without considering the trafficking in
Crack under North and the CIA's watch to finance the
Contras' operations, the state subsidized atrocities,
and all of the activities I withheld at the beginning
of this illustration!"
posted by Anonymous at 9:25 PM