The Contras & 9/11: Different Marketing Strategies for the Same Political Agenda

[BuyingThyme]

The Contras & 9/11: Different Marketing Strategies for the Same Political Agenda

In the Contra scandals of the mid 1980s (misleadingly dubbed “Iran-Contra), the Reagan administration, largely in thanks to the work of Senator John Kerry, was found to have violated the Boland Amendment.

By way of the Boland Amendment, Congress made it illegal for the Reagan administration to aid and abet their favorite contra-revolutionaries, the “Contras.” The Contras had taken up arms against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government and anybody else who happened to get in their way.

To the people of Central America, Ronald Reagan provided arms, rape, murder, and torture. But to the people of the United States, Ronald Reagan provided something else entirely.

Drugs.

Though the Republican Party and their corporate-media allies have gone to great lengths to conceal the truth, Ronald Reagan’s pet rebels were drug runners first and contra-revolutionaries second. And though he managed to anoint himself America’s first Commander in Chief in a never-ending War on Drugs, Reagan, we now know, actually went to great lengths to aid and abet the very drug smugglers against whom he had supposedly declared war.

Reagan’s lasting legacy is the drug-and-gun culture which now reaches far beyond the inner-city and into every school and neighborhood across the United States.

Reagan’s lasting legacy is the police state which has placed a huge percentage of American citizens behind bards.

Reagan’s lasting legacy is the extra-Constitutional infringements on civil liberties which now undermine our entire system of justice.

And, looking back on this legacy, Reagan’s calculated decision to look the other way on drugs may prove to be far more damaging to the “Homeland” than Bush’s calculated decision to look the other way on the Eleventh of September.

But the strategies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were virtually the same: The best way to sell a cure is to introduce a disease.

[BuyingThyme]

1. M

kcik

[leftstreet]

2. Where's this from?

Is there more to the article?

:hi:

[madokie]

4. I've no idea from where this comes

but I do know that during the Carter years here in ok if you wanted to be smoking any pot during the late winter, spring and early summer you had better have had it stashed cause you weren't going to find any on the street. As soon as the raygun goons hit the scene pot and cocaine were everywhere, pretty much stayed that way for the next 12 years too. The raygun goons were importing all kinds of drugs, cocaine, crack and pot for sure. In fact cocaine and crack really took off during those early raygun years. For profit prisons were being built and our inter-city and poor neighborhood kids were the fodder for them. Republicons are not good people for the most part.

[Sebastian Doyle]

15. And where did that Reagan era pot come from?

I seem to remember the word "Afghanistan" being spoken a lot in high school, and it wasn't in discussions about Poppy Bush's CIA trained Al Qaeda insurgency fighting the Commies.

[madokie]

19. yep Afghanistan, Turkey, Mexico and south America

every place poppy's cia was heavily involved in hate and discontent

[BuyingThyme]

5. It came from

my little brain.

But I can add more if you like.

:hi:

[leftstreet]

6. Outstanding!

I'm so used to seeing web articles in the framed boxes.

Nicely done!

[BuyingThyme]

8. I use the boxes to

trick people into reading.

[ControlledDemolition]

12. The Taliban had almost erradicated the poppy crop until Bush Jnr. and 911 came along! n/t

[BuyingThyme]

13. Yeah. Funny that.

[Echo In Light]

3. "The best way to sell a cure is to introduce a disease."

That's the m.o.

Problem/Reaction/Solution

[ControlledDemolition]

11. Don't forget, treatment is more profitable than cure! n/t

[Echo In Light]

21. And profitable in more ways than one n/t

[Kaleko]

7. Bloody right.

K & R

[BuyingThyme]

9. I

kcik

[BuyingThyme]

10. H

(kcik)

[BuyingThyme]

14. O

(kcik)

[Kaleko]

16. P

[G_j]

17. in delivering arms to the Contras, the planes didn't come back empty

plus, coke provided the right kind of money to buy more arms.

[noise]

18. Some other similarities

Playing the patriot card (actually the authoritarian card) to justify illegal policies:

1) The leader shouldn't be restricted by the rule of law. Unitary executive theory.

2) Any criminal conduct was motivated by good faith. Leaders always act in good faith even when all the evidence points to bad faith.

3) Brilliant use of propaganda. Shock doctrine policies disguised as a war against evil communists just as the WoT today is a propaganda vehicle for more shock doctrine policies.

4) Holding powerful officials accountable for abusing that power was "unfair." The country needed to move on from such divisiveness.

[Wilms]

20. .