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Monday, December 12, 2005

Iran-Contra was covered up; but was it itself a coverup?

Cannonfire has a bunch of posts about the extended Duke Cunningham scandal. This one includes these intriguing paragraphs:
Reagan's illegal arms sales to Iran resulted in hefty profits being diverted to the contras. That's why they called it the Iran-Contra affair.

I've summarized with an almost criminal brevity a lot of sordid history, and I've done so to emphasize one point: Every time a new scandal popped up during the 1980s and early 1990s, the same refrain appeared: "It's all about funding the contras!" Money from arms sales, cocaine, heroin, gold, S&Ls, crooked banks, gambling, software, bribery, Middle East financiers, "patriotic" donations -- it all went toward regime change in the small country of Nicaragua.

Supposedly.

Eventually, a few people started asking the obvious question: How much money did the contras need? Were they firing gold bullets down there?

In fact, fighters within the contra movement always insisted that they were seriously underfunded. Do not dismiss this assessment. The Sandinista army was hardly one of the world's most impressive fighting machines, yet the contras never seemed to make much headway against them. The FDN won only when the Nicaraguan electorate finally -- literally -- cried "uncle."

But if others grabbed much of this "contra" money -- where did it go? Were pockets lined, or was the clandestine cash used for partisan purposes?
There's lots more there--links to the Bushies and Jose Posada Carilles and BCCI and the S&L scandal and the Colombian cocaine cartels. And that's from just one of the posts! I haven't read all the others, yet. I'll bet we'll find Rev. Moon and Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay lurking in there somewhere--maybe Joe Lieberman, too!