Re: "..Please explain what the Iran-Contra scadal was..."
Seems that Ronald Reagan wanted to bomb Nicaragua when an Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista Marxist rebels, overthrew the government and took power to create another "Cuba style" Socialist Dictatorship.
Though the Reagan Administration "beat the drums of war", claiming that Nicaragua could would invade the U.S., and even though Henry Kissinger claimed the Sandinistas "...as dangerous as the Nazis of the 1930's...", Congress wasn't buying it, and refused to allow Reagan the funds to finance a guerilla movement named the "Contras", which was a group made up primarily of ex-establishment military men and assisted by our CIA to stage a "counter-revolution".
Reagan promised he would "obey the will of the Congress", but secretly authorized Marine Colonel Oliver North to take charge and start a war against Nicaragua behind the back of both Congress and also the American people.
Operating from an office in the basement of the White House, Col. North arranged to sell large amounts of American arms directly to the Mullahs of the Iranian Terror State, and used CIA and U.S. cargo planes to deliver them to Teheran.
Thus, the CIA & Reagan Administration waged a clandestine war without the knowledge or consent of the American people and the Congress.
The money they received in exchange was used to pay for the financing of the Contra guerilla "freedom fighters", who received uniforms, weapons, training, etc. from CIA & U.S. military sources.
Drugs were at times the favored currency of exchange in a great number of transactions between the Contras and high level U.S. government and intelligence operatives.
It appears large quantities of marijuana and cocaine were exchanged for American military aid, after which the contraband was delivered by our own government to major American cities and sold for tremendous profits.
The ubiquitous Mr. Adnan Kashogi, notorious Iranian world arms dealer and smuggler, assisted the arms sales to Iran
as did elements within the Israeli government and military.I can't remember exactly how the sh*t hit the fan, but eventually the
conspiracy was exposed, and Congress went ballistic.
Congress subpoened Colonel North as well as his stunningly beautiful "personal secretary"
Fawn Hall, and major league investigations were undertaken.
Eventually the Congress issued statements claiming that their investigations proved all types of treasonous activities were undertaken with the full knowledge and consent of Reagan and his top officials.
President Reagan, in a televised address to the American people in which he addressed the charges made against him, said "In spite of the facts, he and his government were innocent and had never done anything wrong." [I paraphrase his exact words]
Lots of sh*t flew all over, lots of trouble for those "lower rungs on the ladder", and after all was said and done, the American people loved Reagan so much that they rationalized every possible lie to both excuse and/or justify his behaviors.
Then, true to form, the American people
completely forgot anything and everything within two weeks of the scandal.
To date, there are no Americans who remember anything about Reagan, except the following:
a-They can only remember that he was the greatest President and greatest Conservative and greatest Republican who ever lived, and
b-They can only "recall" that Reagan "personally and all alone defeated the Soviet Union" with
his "master plan" of turning the U.S. into the world's largest "debtor nation" (for the first time in its history), in order to borrow money to spend almost entirely on military weaponry and his most favored "Star Wars" Project.And they all lived happily ever after, and never again did the U.S. get involved in such lies and shenanigans again.
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