• BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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    12 days ago

    George HW Bush pardoned him on the advice of William Barr, giving Barr the start of a career helping presidents avoid responsibility for their illegal activities.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Hear me out, theoretically this is actually cool?

    Like, theoretically, take away the Fox propaganda and shameless lack of disclosure. Picture this guy presenting himself as a CI, like a convicted hacker, former cartel, defector or something. He has real experience with Iran, missiles, the whole Contra affair. He knows what they’d do with them, how they get them, what the buyers are like because he shamelessly sold them.

    That’d be a cool perspective.

    It’s of course not reality, but still.

    • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      13 days ago

      Theoretically sure. But the regime he sold it to go toppled like three times over. So it’s not the same people anymore and the context he could provide is out of date and … checks notes still based on his treasonous actions.

      • Broken@lemmy.ml
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        13 days ago

        I’m sure as hell not defending him, but your point is valid and why him being against them having missiles isn’t necessarily a contradiction. “Them” isn’t the same them that he sold to. Again, not defending him and I haven’t listen to anything he’s said recently to know his stance (nor do I really care to), but just keeping my own logic in check.

      • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        No. The current constitution is what they got after the revolution in 1979. Khomeini was supreme leader until 1989. Khamenei somehow got himself appointed to successor just in time. The successor he replaced was against mass executions and stuff. Funny how it goes.

  • Fontasia@feddit.nl
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    13 days ago

    To be fair, he’s annoyed at them having missiles, he had no problem selling them as long as he could profit.

  • lol_idk@lemmy.ml
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    13 days ago

    Related to nothing but Ollie, I rode an elevator with him and some police in the US courthouse in DC during his trial

  • sartalon@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Don’t get me wrong. The Iran - Contra affair was a terrible circumvention of U.S. law and North deserved to go to prison and Reagan should have been impeached.

    However, this post is a mischaracterization of that event.

    This was part of an overall plan to get American hostages released.

    That being said, we sold arms to Iran, who was fighting Iraq (a U.S. ally at the time), and one of the intermediaries we used was fucking Israel.

    Yup, Israel helped us sell arms to Iran. So Iran can turn around and use them against an ally.

    North was then made a fall guy.

    I was younger when this happened but I recall, at the time, it was characterized as we just sold them parts for their airplanes and defensive arms.

    Man, we just can’t stop fucking our face with our own foot.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      This was part of an overall plan to get American hostages released.

      It was part of an overall plan to commit treason in order to sabotage Carter by preventing the hostages from being released before the election so that Reagan would win.

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        You’re mixing up your Reagan-era Iran scandals.

        First, there was the Iran Hostage Crisis, where Iranians stormed the US embassy and took a bunch of hostages in 1979. While I have no doubt there was Republican fuckery going on, Carter really didn’t do himself any favors with his handling of that. The hostages were finally released, after more than a year, the day Reagan was inaugurated

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

        Iran-Contra was a scandal where the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran (who was fighting Iraq, then an American ally), circumventing Congress. They then gave the money to the Contras, a group of rebels in Nicaragua, again circumventing Congress:

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair

        You are correct that part of the goal was to release hostages, but those hostages were taken by the Lebanese well after Reagan’s first election.

        • davel@lemmy.ml
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          12 days ago

          This reminds me how there’s a world of difference between learning history and living it. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Walter Cronkite saying every evening that it’s the XXXth day of the Iran hostage crisis. And still I remember Ollie North’s trial. There’s no way I’d mix them up.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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      12 days ago

      North wasn’t the “Fall Guy.” That makes him sound like a scapegoat, which he wasn’t, he was the guy managing the entire operation.

      Also, it wasn’t part of an operation to get the Iranian hostages released. They had been released back in 1980, as soon as Reagan had been inaugurated. The Iran-Contra Conspiracy happened later, but the wound from that humiliating episode was still stinging in the American psyche. The fact that North was selling weapons to our bitterest enemy at the time is only one of the things that made this such an egregious violation.

      Iran-Contra was about providing weapons, training, and support to the conservative soldiers fighting the establishment of a Russian-supported regime in Central America.

  • davel@lemmy.ml
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    13 days ago

    Those who do US crimes get airtime; those who expose them get canceled.

    • Anomalocaris@lemm.ee
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      12 days ago

      we think it started with trump, but Reagan did so much illegal BS.

      He should have spent the rest of his life in jail for trafficking cocaine

      • Grapho@lemmy.ml
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        12 days ago

        He spent the rest of his lif living with Nancy Reagan so I think he kinda got his due

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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          12 days ago

          When Nancy Reagan was a struggling actress in Hollywood, she had a reputation for giving the best blowjobs in town. True story.