From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Weinberger's Pardon
Reply-To: Hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 04:26:15 GMT

In article <markp.725749195@dragonfly.wri.com>, markp@dragonfly.wri.com (Mark
Pundurs) writes:
ines: 27
|>
|>In <1992Dec30.195442.29596@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> Dr. Norman J. LaFave
|><lafave@ial4.jsc.nasa.gov> writes:
|>
|>>In article <bhayden.725732024@teal> Bruce Hayden, bhayden@teal.csn.org
|>>writes:
|>>>And $31 million dollars. After all, aren't all conservative
|>>>republicans greedy?
|>
|>>Do you really think that is his salary????   :-/
|>
|>No; that's how much of OUR money he's blown on his charade. (Bet his salary
|>is hefty, though...)
|>
|>>>Which laws are you talking about? Jaywalking? Lying to Congress?
|>
|>>Lying to Congress, embezzling government funds, circumventing national
|>>policy, ....
|>
|>Charge #1. Maybe.
|>Charge #2. Bull! It's not clear that PROFITS from arms sales are "government
|>	   funds; and the money was LEGALLY spent furthering foreign policy 
|>	   goals. (The much-ballyhooed Boland Amendment didn't apply to
|>	   the NSC -- and didn't enact any penalties for infractions.)
|>Charge #3. Aiding the Contras WAS national policy: it was the
|>Administration's
|>	   policy, and the on-again-off-again Congress had no policy.
|>


Legaly the President does not have the right to spend a dime without the
approval of congress. So the applogisit above has screwed charge #2. Foreign
policy is the remit of the Senate so #3 falls.

Fact is both Regan and Bush should be tried (pref. together with Saddam Hussein
and Slob. Milosoveich) before an international court of human rights. The
Contras that the Republicans funded were terrorists who mined the fields,
destroyed hospitals and schools and torrtured civilians.

Remember that the El-Salvador Government that the Nicaraguans were accused of
funding subversive action against is the same one wich filled the mass graves
which have recently been found arround it's army bases. In fact the main route
of supply of weapons to the rebels in El Salvador was the well financed, well
armed and completely corrupt Contras rather than the Nicaraguan govt which
didn't have weapons to spare.

In fact the USA found guilty by the world court and there is an outstanding
judgement in favour of Nicaragua that the USA still has not paid. The refusal of
the USA to recognise that it is also subject to international law is a big
handicap in doing anything constructive in this area re Saddam.

The fact is that the Sandinistas held two elections, won one and lost the other.
Now in terms of US elections they may not have been perfect, however they were
about as good as you can expect in Central America. Would the UK have been
justified in invading the US in 1876 after Grant fraudulently prevented Tilden
from taking the office he was elected to? Certainly the Nicaraguan elections
were much fairer than those in El-Salvador where the government praised by Regan
for it's commitment to democracy was liquidating the opposition using the Death
Squads.

What demonstrates a respect for democracy however is not what happens when an
election is won, but what happens when one is lost. The Sandinistas lost the
election and relinquished power. That is virtualy unique in the area.

The rise of the Hispanic population, particularly in the Californias makes such
a colonial attitude to central and south America no longer possible. What the US
failed to realize in Nicaragua was that so long as it continued to support the
dictators, Saddam, Noriega, Pinochet, Marcos, Duarte and the rest of the squalid
regimes that it used as proxies in the cold war it had no right to take the
condesending line it did on human rights. Now that the cold war is over Chile,
Nicaragua, El-Salvador and the Philipeans have been able to rid themselves of
the regimes that the USA imposed on them. These triumphs should be greeted just
as warmly as the return of Poland, East Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe
to the free world.

If there is one lesson that Iraq teaches it is that shoddy dictators should not
be supported at any cost. If the US had not continue to support Saddam after he
gassed the Kurds, indeed if they had even acknowledged that it had occured the
events in Kewait might have been quite different.

Another changing perspective is the role of the European alies. Wheras before
the role of the US in NATO meant that much of the criticism of the US was
moderated and couched in diplomatic tones that often failed to connect, the
situation now is quite different. 

--

Phill Hallam-Baker