U.S. President Ronald Reagan / Trivia & Commentary

Article One:

     "Ronald Reagan is dead now, and everyone is being nice to him. In every aspect, this is appropriate. He was a husband and a father, a beloved member of a family, and he will be missed by those he was close to. His death was long, slow and agonizing because of the Alzheimer's Disease which ruined him, one drop of lucidity at a time. My grandmother died ten years ago almost to the day because of this disease, and this disease took ten years to do its dirty, filthy, wretched work on her.
   "The dignity and candor of Reagan's farewell letter to the American people was as magnificent a departure from public life as any that has been seen in our history, but the ugly truth of his illness was that he lived on, and on, and on. His family and friends watched as he faded from the world of the real, as the simple dignity afforded to all life collapsed like loose sand behind his ever more vacant eyes. Only those who have seen Alzheimer's Disease invade a mind can know the truth of this. It is a cursed way to die.
   "In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, 'The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads.'
   "The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.
   "How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days?
   "The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard.
   "Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see.
   "Mainstream media journalism today is a shameful joke because of Reagan's deregulation policies. Once upon a time, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that the information we receive - information vital to the ability of the people to govern in the manner intended - came from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. Reagan's policies annihilated the Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for a few mega-corporations to gather journalism unto themselves. Today, Reagan's old bosses at General Electric own three of the most-watched news channels. This company profits from every war we fight, but somehow is trusted to tell the truths of war. Thus, the myths are sold to us.
   "The deregulation policies of Ronald Reagan did not just deliver journalism to these massive corporations, but handed virtually every facet of our lives into the hands of this privileged few. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all tainted because Reagan battered down every environmental regulation he came across so corporations could improve their bottom line. Our leaders are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the corporations that were made all-powerful by Reagan's deregulation craze. The Savings and Loan scandal of Reagan's time, which cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, is but one example of Reagan's decision that the foxes would be fine guards in the hen house.
   "Ronald Reagan believed in small government, despite the fact that he grew government massively during his time. Social programs which protected the weakest of our citizens were gutted by Reagan's policies, delivering millions into despair. Reagan was able to do this by caricaturing the 'welfare queen,' who punched out babies by the barn load, who drove the flashy car bought with your tax dollars, who refused to work because she didn't have to. This was a vicious, racist lie, one result of which was the decimation of a generation by crack cocaine. The urban poor were left to rot because Ronald Reagan believed in 'self-sufficiency.'
   "Because Ronald Reagan could not be bothered to fund research into 'gay cancer,' the AIDS virus was allowed to carve out a comfortable home in America. The aftershocks from this callous disregard for people whose homosexuality was deemed evil by religious conservatives cannot be overstated. Beyond the graves of those who died from a disease which was allowed to burn unchecked, there are generations of Americans today living with the subconscious idea that sex equals death.
   "The veneer of honor and respect painted across the legacy of Ronald Reagan is itself a myth of biblical proportions. The coverage proffered today of the Reagan legacy seldom mentions impropriety until the Iran/Contra scandal appears on the administration timeline. This sin of omission is vast. By the end of his term in office, some 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, indicted or investigated for misconduct and/or criminal activities.
   "Some of the names on this disgraceful roll-call: Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Casper Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Deaver, E. Bob Wallach, James Watt, Alan D. Fiers, Clair George, Duane R. Clarridge, Anne Gorscuh Burford, Rita Lavelle, Richard Allen, Richard Beggs, Guy Flake, Louis Glutfrida, Edwin Gray, Max Hugel, Carlos Campbell, John Fedders, Arthur Hayes, J. Lynn Helms, Marjory Mecklenburg, Robert Nimmo, J. William Petro, Thomas C. Reed, Emanuel Savas, Charles Wick. Many of these names are lost to history, but more than a few of them are still with us today, 'rehabilitated' by the administration of George W. Bush.
   "Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?
   "One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.
   "The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.
   "Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.
   "In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
   "How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.
   "In the final analysis, however, the legacy of Ronald Reagan - whether he had an active hand in its formulation, or was merely along for the ride - is beyond dispute. His famous question, 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?' is easy to answer. We are not better off than we were four years ago, or eight years ago, or twelve, or twenty. We are a badly damaged state, ruled today by a man who subsists off Reagan's most corrosive final gift to us all: It is the image that matters, and be damned to the truth." [Planet Reagan By William Rivers Pitt,  t r u t h o u t | Perspective, 06/07/04]

Note: William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for t r u t h o u t. He is a New York Times and international best selling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'

Article Two:

   "Reagan supporters tend to dismiss the events collectively known  as the Iran-contra scandal as a politically motivated, much-ado-about-nothing uproar. In fact, Iran-contra exposed a fundamental contempt for the American system and an end-justifies-the-means mentality, and most post-death commentaries about Reagan mentioned the events only in passing, if at all.
   "Reagan himself was the driving force behind the Iran portion of the scandal, waving off legal concerns initially expressed by some of his staff. It involved secretly selling military armaments  - TOW antitank missles and HAWK antiaircraft missles and spare parts - to the Iranian regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In exchange, Hezbollah terrorists based in Lebanon but controlled by Iran released a handful of western hostages they were holding in Beirut.
* Out the window went long-standing U.S. policy, to which Reagan paid lip service, against negotiating with terrorists. (Among other outrages, Hezbollah carried out the 1983 suicide truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marine peacekeepers at their barracks in Beirut.)
* Also ignored was the arms embargo against Iran enacted after the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the confinement of dozens of Americans there for over a year.
* The Iran arms deals of 1985 and 1986 violated sections of the Arms Export Control Act, the amended National Security Act of 1947 and the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980. Congress built exceptions into all these laws to accomodate important intelligence missions, but Reagan and his men violated the exceptions by deliberately not notifying in advance a limited number of specific senators and representatives.
   "The arms deals of August and September 1985, brokered by sleazy profiteers, were disguised as Israeli transactions. Additional shipments in 1986 were run through the CIA and phony for-profit fronts.
   "Two Reagan national security advisors (first Robert C. McFarlane, then Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter) ran the operations with the cooperation of CIA director William Casey. Oliver L. North, a midlevel National Security Council aide who later resigned his commission as a U.S. Marine officer, was given wide latitude in handling the details from offices in the White House.
   "The contra element of the scandal was even worse. This involved providing funds and arms to rebels - known as the contras - fighting the ruling Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. In 1984, Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which outlawed government aid.
   "But Reagan saw the contras as anti-communists, and he told his staff to keep them viable somehow. In defiance of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to control funding, Reagan's administration sought and found funds elsewhere.
   "It came from foreign governments, some of which were promised favors in exchange for helping the contras; from wealthy Americans whose contributions were laundered illegally through offshore accounts set up by a foundation with tax-exempt status; and, eventually, from profits from the arms sales to Iran. All the money was controlled by and funneled to the contras by North.
   "When these secrets started coming to light in the fall of 1986, the administration responded with conflicting, incomplete, misleading or outright false statements to the American people and later to a blue-ribbon investigating commission, to congressional committees and to criminal investigators.
   "North and Poindexter destroyed physical and electronic evidence. Other administration officials - including Vice President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger - delayed producing relevant materials requested by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, who had been appointed by Attorney General Edwin Meese. (Bush, by then president, didn't turn over his diary until December 1992.)
   "Fourteen people eventually were charged with crimes. Seven pleaded guilty. Four were convicted by juries. One case was dismissed after the administration refused to declassify information essential to the defense.
   "On Dec. 24, 1992, in one of his last acts as Reagan's successor, President George H.W. Bush pardoned two defendants before their trials began, Weinberger and Duane C. Clarridge, former chief of the CIA's operations in Europe. Bush also pardoned two other CIA officials and McFarlane and Elliott Abrams, an assistant secretary of state, both of whom had pleaded guilty to withholding evidence from Congress.
   "(Abrams now serves [2004] on the national security staff of President George W. Bush and is responsible for White House initiatives in the Middle East, including Arab-Israeli relations.)
   "Among those convicted were North and Poindexter, but their convictions later were reversed because they had admitted wrongdoing while testifying to Congress under grants of immunity....
   "The final report of the Iran-contra independent counsel found insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Reagan was guilty of criminal conduct. But it also concluded that 'President Reagan created the conditions which made possible the crimes committed by others.'
   "That's leadership of a sort, but it is anything but admirable." [By Eric Mink, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 06/22/04]