TimothySexton.com
A Lot of Learning Makes You A Dangerous Thing
The GOP is Tough on Terror? Think Again
Hillary Clinton received much flak for asserting that a terrorist attack would benefit the Republican Party more than the Democrat Party. The truth hurts, don’t it? The simple fact is that the GOP has positioned itself as the go-to party to save us all from terrorism; the GOP is hard on terror, whereas the Democrats are soft on terror. Interesting concept, to be sure. Yet one cannot help but swallow that line of reasoning with some difficulty when listening George W. Bush rattling the sabers (again) against Iran when his own father was responsible for selling weapons to that country in the Iran/Contra affair. George W. Bush has also spoken tough against Hezbollah; if only he would just occasionally crack open a history book. Then George W. Bush might find that part of that whole Iran/Contra boogaloo involved negotiations to release members of Hezbollah—some of the most feared terrorists in the world—from a jail in Kuwait. Yes, you read that right: Pres. Ronald Reagan and his Vice President George H.W. Bush actively sought to release members of the Hezbollah terrorist group in addition to selling weapons to Iran.
I don’t know about you, but my definition of being tough on terror is significantly different.
Of course, we all know that Ronald Reagan used “I can’t recall” even more than Alberto Gonzales when he was pressed about his involvement in the Iran/Contra arms-for-hostages for deal and we all know that George H.W. Bush described his own role as Vice President thusly: “I was out of the loop.’ So we either have a situation where Reagan and Bush had no idea what was happening within their own administration—which is really scary—or we have a situation where they lied about what they knew. Which is far more likely. Oliver North, the hero of the Religious Right, began by calling Ronald Reagan a liar; North made it clear that Reagan knew everything tat was going on. It is one of those mysterious of hypocrisy that Oliver North could become such a darling of the Religious Right when their self-professed modern-day messiah was the very man whom Oliver North branded a liar. But that’s another story. Let’s take a look at what we know for sure about the Iran/Contra arms-for-hostages deal and how it puts a lie to the belief that the GOP is tough on terrorism.
If you want to find out the general details that most people should be required to know about Iran/Contra, look elsewhere. Essentially it was an illegal and even treasonous operation being run from within the White House. Part of the deal that is less well known is that it wasn’t just weapons that Oliver and Company were willing to give to Iranian leaders in order to fund contra terrorists—I mean freedom fighters—that the US were backing in Latin America. Oliver North, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, those tough as nails and no-nonsense Republicans, also agreed to engage in negotiations with Kuwait to get prisoners released known Shi’ite prisoners known as Dawa’a prisoners released from jail. These guys were members of Hezbollah; convicted of such crimes as car bombing. In addition to Iranians, some of those hoping to see the Dawa’a prisoners get out of jail were those involved in the 1983 bombing of a Marine base in Beirut.
These negotiations eventually fell through and Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and were not able to accomplish their goal of releasing hardcore terrorists back into society. Iran/Contra became Reagan’s biggest scandal, eventually being investigated by Congress. One of those in Congress in charge of investigating the wrongdoings of the Iran/Contra affair was a Congressman named Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney’s conclusion was that no laws had been violated. And whatever happened to those Hezbollah terrorists that the mean old tough-on-terror GOP tried to free? Well, eventually they were released from bondage by a former ally of the US. It was during the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. His name was Saddam Hussein.
