It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.
It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.
His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House.
This is what Republicans have traditionally done: Put their political ambitions ahead of loyalty to the nation. Those hostages probably spent days, weeks, even months in confinement because the Republicans got the message to the Iranian regime to hold them until Reagan was sworn in.
After all, Nixon did the same thing. Only with Nixon, tens of thousands of AMericans paid for his duplicity with their lives.
Every living Iran hostage, as well as their survivors if they've passed away, should sue the Republican National Committee for millions of dollars for unlawful confinement, kidnapping and anything else that a team of creative lawyers can come up with.
Ronald Reagan conspired with the Iranians. That should be the legacy of the Gipper.
5 comments:
The Iranians hated Carter. They could have released the hostages after the election, but chose to keep them until Reagan was sworn in. This lead to arms for hostages (Hezbollah edition) and then Iran Contra.
Republicans are shit. One of the books kicking around my head is trying to detail how the Republican party devolved from the Party of Lincoln into the Trump ass licking creeps that they became, starting with the 1876 election. Unfortunately, my several times a day eating habit keeps me grinding for a paycheck.
Congrats, you have made the 48,000th comment.
An honor I deeply deserve. I'm just glad it didn't go to Glenn Filthy.
Nah, he’s on the banhammer list until he can figure out how to act like a civilized person.
I don’t recommend holding your breath waiting for that to happen.
It was rather obvious what Reagan did back then but besides questioning about the Iranian arms deal later they didn't do much investigating. Or they (Democrats) didn't want to go too far to spoil this country's record of never going after a president like some third world countries do quite often. TFG just pushed the envelope to the point that something has to be done or this country is going to be just the richest third world country. A lot of the Republicans would like that though, as long as they are on the top.
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