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How King George the First Got In | Planet Waves for Nov. 2 Gather round everyone and listen to your old Uncle Eric tell a little story from when he was a boy. It's a scary story, so I'm telling it during the day. And I know you may not believe it, but I do value my reputation as a journalist, even if I happen to tell tall tales from my fishing trips and African hunting adventures back in the old days. When the Reagan/Bush ticket was running in 1980, there was a situation involving 52 hostages in Iran. At this point in history, Iran and Iraq were one another's enemies, and at war. Iraq was good friends with the United States. Now, stop giggling, kids, this is a serious story. Iraq was our friend because they were a country not run by Islamic fundamentalists (who we have to hate), and because Saddam Hussein was on the CIA payroll -- a federal employee. Sorry, I don't have copies of his paycheck stubs, but this fact is very easy to research and is well known and acknowledged, except of course in U.S.A. Today. Iran -- where the dues wear turbans -- was our official enemy. In fact, the turban dudes were such enemies that we funded Iraq's war against them; after all, the enemy of our enemy is our friend, and we had to help Saddam defeat the mean fundamentalists. So we sold Saddam lots of weapons, including biological and chemical weapons (which is, in truth, now George W. Bush could claim that Saddam had them -- the U.S. and the UK sold them, but we're ahead of ourselves a bit -- see footnote below). So Iran had these 52 hostages (taken in 1979), held in the United States Embassy, and a guy named Jimmy Carter was president. As long as the hostages were held, it looked very bad for him, even though (just like with hostages today) there was very little he could do about it. What happened next was the Reagan/Bush campaign made a little deal with the Iranians. It went like this. You keep those hostages through the election, and when we make the other guy look like a sissy and win the election, we'll give you all the weapons you need in your war against your enemy, Iraq! And that, basically, is what happened. Reagan/Bush campaign ran on a platform promise of "no arms for hostages" at the same time as they were trading arms for hostages, and for the election itself. (Do these people ever just get elected? Um, no.) We all know about the story of those guns sold to the Iranians. The name Ollie North is familiar to most people. He was a lieutenant colonel working on the National Security staff. Remember his pretty secretary, Fawn Hall? Remember his devoted boss, John Poindexter, who used to have Condi Rice's job? Well, they were responsible for making sure that the Ayatollah Khomeini got all those weapons, secretly of course, in the war against our friend and his enemy Saddam Hussein. It was a dirty trick, and a betrayal of the trust of the American people, and of Saddam, but it worked. In fact it worked so well that Ollie North had a great idea. Let's take the profits from these illegal arms sales and, since nobody can find out about them anyway, we'll buy guns for our friends down in Central America, the Contras. The Contras were a swept-together band of unemployed mercenaries that were gathered together by the CIA. Their job was to kill civilians in Nicaragua, to scare them and make sure that a constant state of war eroded the support for the democratically elected president, Daniel Ortega (that worked great). It was a federal crime to fund these guys; something called the Boland Amendment prohibited it. But we're talking about a secret operation, not legitimate brutal killing. This funding went on until 1987; the Contra terrorists took aim at farming cooperatives, schools, and hospitals -- soft targets that could not shoot back. Then one day it came out. This was called the Iran-Contra scandal. I am the last person on Earth who remembers the story. Ollie North and John Poindexter were fired by Ronald Reagan, who said he had "bitter bile in my throat," so angry was he upon hearing about this. Of course, Ollie had briefed him regularly -- but the "president never knows" and so Reagan was protected. This scandal, which represents the very roots of how Reagan and Bush took office, and how they maintained their office, was the big mar on their administration. Still, George was elected in 1988, and then decided that his old friend and employee (who he betrayed), Saddam Hussein, was the new enemy. In that move, Saudi Arabia became our friends. The rest, as you know, is history. Okay, that was just a scary story. Now, please don't be too frightened to vote! PS, the end result of this was that for 10 years, Iraq was pounded by attacks from Iran; then in 1991, the United States led a massive war, and bombing of Iraq continued all the way through the Clinton administration, which left Iraq without a pot to pee in, much less water to drink. Then King George II ascended to the throne... ---- Here is a bit about the United States and England selling weapons to Iraq. | ||||||
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