Word: contras
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Liman gained national prominence through hisroles as investigator of the 1971 Attica prisonuprising and the Iran-Contra scandal...
...rule for Republicans seems to be that lying under oath about things other than adultery is not actionable. Hyde explained this standard best when excusing lies in the Iran-contra affair. It did not make sense, he said, to "label every untruth and every deception an outrage...in the murkier grayness of the real world, choices must often be made." Ronald Reagan could remember very little about his efforts to arm the contras, but when confronted with facts indicating that he'd been told about it, he insisted his "heart and [his] best intentions" proved otherwise. After Ollie North bragged...
Lawrence Walsh's probe of the Iran-contra allegations ratcheted up the debate about the statute because he spent so much time and money on the job. Walsh was the first independent counsel to conduct a wide-ranging and costly ($47 million) investigation. It resulted in seven guilty pleas and four convictions (two were overturned, and George Bush pardoned six of the targets). There has been grumbling about various probes since Walsh's, but only Starr's ever expanding Whitewater investigation, which is likely to exceed the cost of Walsh's inquiry, has been so castigated...
...Robert Jordan in Nicaragua" shows such a perspective with Boyle's consciousness of the contemporary political times. The famous Hemingway character finds that dealings with the contra-contras and the contras are not so very valiant or elegant as one would imagine. Much like the dealings of the government in the Reagan years with Nicaragua, Boyle points out that America is as unsuited for the revolutions in Central America as Robert Jordan. Unfortunately, America and Robert Jordan both tangle with Central America, and both times the result is disastrous...
...denouncing it both as political and as a threat to national sovereignty. What if the Cambodians, for example, suddenly wanted to extradite Henry Kissinger, charging that his direction of bombings of civilian villages during the Vietnam War constituted a crime against humanity? Or if the engineers of the Iran-contra scandal were to face an international tribunal? Being committed to justice on paper is easy. Being prepared to subject yourself to it is another story...