American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [66]
Kinda makes you wonder about who our “enemies” really are, doesn’t it? There the Republicans were, sending weapons first to Iran to make sure Reagan got elected, then turning around and arming Saddam Hussein—right down to getting him stuff for chemical weapons that would justify W’s invasion of Iraq twenty years later! And now today, it’s all about demonizing another recipient of our generosity—Iran! Who’s the real demon here? We are, behind the scenes, because we’re the ones giving these countries weapons that they can turn around and use on us. It’s utter craziness, and so frustrating to watch our leaders operate with so little regard for human life.
I’m a believer that if Congress and the media had been doing their jobs right when the October Surprise story began coming out in the late eighties and early nineties, we’d never have gone to war in Iraq. In fact, there would—or at least should—have been impeachment proceedings against George Bush Sr., and that would have been it for the family in politics. No two-term presidency for Junior.
Of course, it was Poppa Bush who set the family precedent for stealing elections. Keep in mind that he’d been director of the CIA in 1976. “Bush had also protected wayward or hot-triggered Agency operatives—veterans of everything from Chilean assassinations to Vietnam’s Phoenix program and improper domestic surveillance—from indictment by President Ford’s Justice Department.”16 Then Carter came along and replaced Bush with Stansfield Turner. The CIA’s good-old-boy network hated Carter, because Turner proceeded to clean house and dismiss many of the longtime covert operatives.
But I digress. Let’s pick up the 1980 story with the fact that, right after the Paris meeting with Bush and Gates in attendance, Iran suddenly told the Carter administration it had no further interest in receiving military equipment.17 Then, over the next several days, Israel quietly shipped F-4 fighter-aircraft tires to the Iranians, in violation of the U.S. arms embargo,18 while Iran started dispersing the hostages to several different locations.
So, Carter lost the election and then came the timed release (like a good sleeping pill) on Reagan’s inauguration day. Banker Ernest Backes from Clearstream in Luxembourg later said he’d been in charge of a transfer of $7 million from Chase Manhattan and Citibank on January 16, 1980, to help pay for the hostages’ liberation.19 According to Bani-Sadr of Iran: “We have published documents which show that US arms were shipped, via Israel, in March, about 2 months after Reagan became president.”20
Call me naïve, but I just find it amazing how powerful people can do illegal things and so easily cover their tracks. If George Bush went over and used the hostages for pawns in a political game, shouldn’t he and his cronies go to jail for that? I mean, let’s make a comparison. Say some people were being held hostage in a bank, and you found out that a lieutenant on the police force delayed getting them freed simply to advance his own personal agenda, wouldn’t you be appalled enough to think that officer should be fired or even stand trial for doing this? The hostages in Iran had been there for months! But ultimately, the Bush-Casey types figure, it’s fine because we’ll win the presidency and all will be better off. You sacrifice the few for the many, not really knowing whether the many are going to profit or not. It’s like saying, if somebody had killed Charles Manson a year before the Sharon Tate murders, none of those people would