Word: nicaragua
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Supposedly, covert U.S. financing of the contra campaign has long made Congress uneasy, but up to now a fragile coalition has accepted the Administration's arguments for it. These are, in essence, that aid to the contras'war is both justified to punish Nicaragua for supporting the leftist insurrection in neighboring El Salvador, and necessary to harass the Sandinistas into giving up their ambitions of fomenting Communist revolution throughout Central America. Only two weeks ago, the Senate tacked $21 million for the contras onto an appropriations bill for famine relief in Africa, which was slated for quick approval...
...dragging the U.S. into a Viet Nam-style war in Central America. The mining has deepened their skepticism, and shaken the faith of Reagan supporters in the Administration's repeated assurances that its prime aim in backing the contras is to stop the flow of Communist weapons into Nicaragua and from there into El Salvador. Said Republican Senator William Cohen of Maine, explaining his vote last week for the antimining resolution: "We know that mines cannot distinguish between commercial vessels and those laden with Soviet and Cuban weapons ... With the destruction of each economic target in Nicaragua...
...conferred by the Arms Export Control Act. If Congress votes no new money for the contras, however, U.S. funding for them will run out in a matter of weeks and their guerrilla war will have to be drastically scaled down. The White House would consider that equivalent to notifying Nicaragua that it could serve as a base for Soviet and Cuban penetration of Central America...
...issue an extraordinary statement in the names of Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, CIA Director Casey and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. Said they: "We state emphatically that we have not considered, nor have we developed, plans to use U.S. military forces to invade Nicaragua or any other Central American country." They were responding to press accounts that the Administration had drawn up contingency plans to use U.S. combat troops in Central America after this year's presidential election. Such plans in fact exist, but in no more detail than the plans the armed forces...
...Shultz-Weinberger-Casey-McFarlane statement gave a strong hint of Ronald Reagan's probable response. "The real issues," it said, "are whether we in the United States want to stand by and let a Communist government in Nicaragua export violence and terrorism in this hemisphere...