Word: nicaragua
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...physical damage wrought so far by the mines that contra guerrillas took responsibility for sowing inside the harbors of Marxist Nicaragua would hardly be noticed in a declared war. The highest reported tally: six Nicaraguan vessels and six ships of five other nations damaged but none confirmed sunk; ten sailors seriously injured but no one killed...
...political damage caused by the mining and by subsequent revelations that the American CIA had directed and supervised it from a mother ship off Nicaragua's Pacific coast is on another order of magnitude altogether. A troublesome rift has opened in the nation's alliances, symbolized by a French offer to help sweep the mines from Nicaraguan waters. The U.S. has been put on the defensive in world forums, first casting a veto...
Perhaps the most important message to take away from this whole mess is a sense of warning. In Nicaragua, it is reported, citizens wait on our election year with baited breath. Professors who spend Sundays at war and the rest of the week with their work preface their books with notes about who will win, while television stars plan their careers around whether or not their show's political content will survive a Reagan election. In the tiny town of San Juan Del Norte, one of the few the Reagan CIA contras hold, a guard now stops journalists from entering...
Clearly there's something strange about Goldwater's conduct, just as there is something strange about the CIA, whose actions throughout the year seem to have been in direct contradiction of the laws that supposedly bind it. The CIA is carrying on what amounts to a war with Nicaragua, without regulation, without government input other than the interests of the executive, and with what seems to be a tacit understanding between the bureau head and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee...
...chairman probably didn't know about the CIA's activities. The CIA also probably assumed that they must not have been interested in hearing what they had not asked for. But whatever the case, it is awfully disconcerting to discover that such inept monitors stand between the CIA and Nicaragua. The president says we are fighting a war to protect democracy, but even our own checks and balances are being flaunted by the executive and scattered by the Congress...