Word: contra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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First came the easy news: 981 prisoners would be set free, none of them national guardsmen convicted of major crimes. Then the non-news: Nicaragua would declare a general amnesty and lift its state of emergency once the U.S. halted all aid to the contra rebels. Finally, the real news: the Sandinistas were willing to talk with the contras through an intermediary to negotiate a cease-fire...
...offer was a stunning reversal for the Sandinistas, who for years have dismissed the contras as "U.S. puppets" and rejected talks of any kind with rebel leaders. Ortega tried to downplay the shift by emphasizing that his proposal does not extend to political negotiations. Cease-fire talks, he said, will "unmask those who say they want peace but in reality want war." The concessions coincided with the first deadline of the peace plan championed by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica and signed last August by five Central American Presidents. While the Reagan Administration countered Ortega's offer with...
...foreign aid to rebels, and other goals were not achieved on schedule. Yet both men remained committed to the proposal, even as rebel violence continued in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The White House had planned to use the failed deadline to push for $270 million in new contra aid. But with a congressional defeat looming, the Administration decided to seek only $30 million in nonlethal aid, to tide the contras over at least through mid-January...
Reviews of The Crimes of Patriots, as well as the book's own jacket, make much of its revelations about the Iran-Contra affair. But they shouldn't. As is the case with Bob Woodward's Veil, portions of this book that deal with the arms for hostages swap are somewhat afterthoughtish. After appearing on the jacket, the name Richard Secord does not come up again until page 273; Ollie North comes up at about the same point but figures even less prominently in Kwitny's narrative...
...rather too smart--no, too dumb to come. Well, at least she knows that if one doesn't have anything smart to say, one shouldn't come to Harvard. Old Cap Weinberger didn't realize this and we had to resort to ketchup to drown him out. And that Contra-guy, (what was his name?) it took him two visits here before he understood that he didn't fit in. Boy was he dumb! Thank goodness more people are getting the message these days. Pretty soon we won't have to be bothered with any of their dumb ideas...