From: csmith@tortoise.cis.ohio-state.edu (craig edward smith)
Subject: Re: Weinberger's Pardon
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 14:23:40 GMT

In article <1993Jan9.052510.20330@Princeton.EDU> niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:
>In article <1993Jan9.040753.3016@cis.ohio-state.edu> csmith@tortoise.cis.ohio-state.edu (craig edward smith) writes:

>>>|>Maybe Congress did not want funds going to the Contras, but the Executive
>>>|>did. Who decides foreign policy, anyway?

>>>The Senate, try reading your constitution.

>>I HAVE read my constitution. The senate has the power to ratify treaties, but
>>not to sign or create them. They have the power to declare war, but not to
>>command the armed forces. The diplomatic corp is under the executive branch
>>and it is the diplomatic corp, under the direction of the president that
>>defines what foreign policy IS! YOU try reading your constitution!

>You try again.  Diplomats do not make foreign policy.  They don't get to
>*do* anything except talk.  The power to negotiate treaties doesn't give
>you the power to send weapons or money to another country.

>The Congress decides what the government can spend money on.  Only
>Congress can do this.  And the Congress decided not to spend money on
>the Contras.  Throwing the words "foreign policy" in there is a red herring.

Hey, YOU were the one who said the Senate decided foreign policy.Clearly,
foreign policy is how we decide to act as a country to other nations. The
representatives of this country to others are our diplomats, who get their
direction not from the senate, but from the executive branch. It is not the
senate but the executive branch that decides who we do and who we don't
sell arms to. Congress had not forbidden the sale of arms to Iran (which I
do not totally agree with either), but the sale was done through an
intermediary. The profits from the intermediary went to the contras.
I was in favor of funding the contras, since the Sandinistas were as much,
if not more, terrorist as the contras. Were you aware that the Sandanistas
where carrying out Genocide on the Mosquito Indians? No, not many did, since
the liberals who control the media did not consider it important.

>>>In fact public opinion in the US was overwelmingly opposed to Iran and also
>>>opposed to the supply of arms to the Contra terrorists.
>
>>WRONG! They were in FAVOR of the contras! They knew the Sandanistas to be
>>Communists and apposed them.
>
>But unlike a few knee-jerks like the John Birch Society and Ed Ipser,
>the rest of the world doesn't faint in shock at the word "Communist."
>They knew the Contras to be heirs to the Somozan legacy, and they knew
>Somoza to be an utterly brutal thug, so they opposed the contras just as
>much as they opposed the Sandanistas.

My feeling is that the world SHOULD faint in shock at the word "Communist"
since it is an ideology born of resentment and has violence as it's
means of spreading. Thank God it's dying of its own contraditions!


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Craig Edward Smith (csmith@cis.ohio-state.edu)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.censorship,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.politics.usa.constitution