Word: nicaragua
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VIOLETA BARRIOS DE CHAMORRO may be President of Nicaragua, but Daniel Ortega's defeated Marxist party still controls the Sandinista Popular Army. Now a group of prominent Nicaraguans calling themselves the "Civilist Movement" are working quietly to remove this Sword of Damocles by abolishing the army altogether. Its peace-keeping functions would be turned over to the national police force, which is less political. The Civilist Movement wants to offer citizens a referendum on the issue, which war-weary citizens would be likely to approve in an honest election. After all, neighboring Costa Rica has got by without an army...
...identified with the 40-year struggle to stop the spread of communism and Soviet influence around the world. Whether American agents were restoring the Shah of Iran to the Peacock Throne in the '50s, organizing an invasion of Cuba in the '60s, or applying the Reagan Doctrine in Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan in the '80s, their real target was the Soviet Union...
Fiers expertly followed this rule as well. When Senate panelist David L. Boren (D-OK) asked him if Gates knew that a plane, shot down in Nicaragua in 1986, was part of "North's operation," Fiers babbled, "Not--I don't have any reason that would make me think he had the details or knew specifically that the plane was part of a North/White House operation, in specific detail...
Fiers believes that we should ignore the Iran-Contra scandal because "the Nicaraguan policy, including the support to the contras, was fully successful." But Violeta Chamorro's eventual democratic election to the presidency of Nicaragua does not justify illegal support for guerrilla revolutionaries...
...those who oppose the Gates nomination say much of the evidence of book cooking is in the reports themselves -- and Gates read and approved all reports issued during his tenure as deputy director. Indeed, the Gates period produced a rash of complaints that, on controversial issues like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Iran, the agency tailored its reports to fit White House policy rather than providing objective conclusions. In the world of intelligence analysis, that is the ultimate...