Word: aid
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...punctuate their concerns that the Sandinistas were bent on a bold expansionist course. "Blood is still flowing as we talk in the U.S. Senate," intoned Jesse Helms, the staunch North Carolina conservative. "It baffles me that we can even be debating 90-day delays (in the delivery of contra aid) when men striving to be free are being killed." Frank Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, warned that the raid "underscores the dangers that the Nicaraguan conflict could spread throughout Central America...
Opponents of contra aid tried, with little success, to downplay the aggression. Jim Sasser, the Tennessean who spearheaded the Democratic challenge, charged the White House with trying "to magnify the whole incident. The Administration went to great lengths to get news of this so- called invasion out as broadly as possible." Christopher Dodd of Connecticut added, "The incident is obviously being used very effectively for political purposes here...
...incursion spoke for itself. There had been talk of a bipartisan compromise that would temper the contra aid with a requirement that the Administration renew bilateral talks with the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. At midweek, however, Reagan signed a letter firmly stating, "Conditioning our aid to the Nicaraguan resistance on the initiation of direct bilateral talks, without first requiring that the Sandinistas talk to their own internal opposition, would seriously undercut our friends in the region and our foreign policy worldwide...
...little more to do with the actual reasons for sending ships across Gaddafi's line of death than rescuing American medical students did with invading Grenada in 1983; as pretexts go, it was about on a par with citing arms shipments to rebels in El Salvador in order to aid the contras in Nicaragua. Scoffed Senator Gary Hart of Colorado: "There is always some fig leaf being used...
...same token, although the Nicaraguan incursion last week was very real, Reagan's decision to send $20 million in emergency aid to Honduras and to permit U.S. helicopters to ferry Honduran troops was very much a part of his larger struggle to rally congressional and public support for $100 million in aid to the contras. Set back by the House a week earlier, the Administration needed a win in the Senate to keep the aid package alive and unencumbered by too many strings. What better way of showing that the contras need help than to make the most of Nicaraguan...