McCain Funded Righwing Contra Death Squads
Many of the "contras" or members of right wing guerrilla groups fighting the Sandinista government in the 1980s were drug smugglers and terrorists. High government officials of the Reagan and Bush, Sr. administrations knew very well about the drug running.
It has been alleged that the Contra drug smuggling sparked the crack cocaine crisis among African-Americans in Los Angeles.
John McCain sent the Contras money from his own pocket. Was that even legal?
'The Associated Press
February 9, 1988
Contras Ask U.S. Citizens For Help
BYLINE: By RICHARD COLE, Associated Press Writer
Contra leaders have postponed peace talks with the leftist Nicaraguan goverment and are asking Americans to donate money to help fund their civil war because Congress rejected military aid.
"We are now faced with the challenge of conserving the integrity and morale of our forces," Azucena Ferrey, a director of the Nicaraguan Resistance, said Monday. "In order to surmount this challenge, we need your financial support and appeal to the generosity which has always characterized the American people.
"This support is essential to overcome the present situation, even though it cannot substitute the aid of the American government nor match the aid received by the Sandinistas from the Soviet Union," she said.
Contributions already have been received from presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Dole gave $500 and McCain $400."
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/07/2008 12:05:00 AM
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Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, notes:
killing health care workers, teachers, and elected officials – the CIA actually prepared a manual which advocated the assassination of the latter. The contras preferred attacking these “soft targets” rather than the national armed forces. In that sense they were very much a terrorist organization; they also used torture and rape as political weapons.
These atrocities brought the contras universal condemnation from humans rights groups such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch. The Sandinistas took the United States to the World Court for its terrorist actions—the same court where the US had won a judgment against Iran just a few years earlier, for the taking of American hostages. The court ruled in favor of Nicaragua, ordering reparations estimated at $17 billion.
The heinous nature of these crimes and the direct involvement of the Reagan Administration disgusted millions of Americans, even more so after Ortega was democratically elected in 1984.....In 1990 the Sandinistas were voted out of office by a public weary of war, with President George H.W. Bush making it clear that the violence would continue if the Sandinistas were re-elected.
Nicaragua’s economy never recovered from the war and the US embargo. Today it is the second poorest country in the hemisphere, with a per capita income less than it was in 1960.
Makes Bill Ayers seem like Gandhi.
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