Killer Koppel

"You remember the Contras in Central America?" Ted Koppel asks Steve Inskeep this morning.

Oh yes, I do remember those mass murderers, rapists and torturers (who get pretty good PR from NPR whenever they come up).

That's not how the "liberal" Ted Koppel remembers them. After waxing eloquent on the US strategy of using locals and proxies to fight for our global dominance (as in Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia "with US special operations forces on the ground and backed by US aircraft overhead") Koppel responds to Inskeep's doubts of whether this tactic has worked or not in the past:

"Well sometimes it did; sometimes it didn’t. You remember the Contras in Central America; did it work, did it not work? I mean the fact of the matter is that now we no longer worry about global communism as we did for about fifty years…"

Ah yes, Nicaragua's 50,000 killed, its destroyed social services infrastructure, and one of the poorest economies in the hemisphere (just ahead of Haiti). Did it work or not? Hmmm...at least we all sleep without fear of the Ruskies coming up through Texas!

Towering Lies

Here was a stunner on Weekend Edition Sunday today: "Ronald Reagan was deep in the Iran-Contra scandal, was accused of having countenanced a plan to trade arms for hostages and diverting the proceeds illegally to freedom fighters in Central America." Freedom fighters! So says historian Michael Beschloss during a report today on high-profile US government commissions. That there is anyone who still can call the torture loving, murderous, drug-running Contras freedom fighters with a straight face is unbelievable--and that the reporter doesn't question it is a shame.

Speaking of the sham Tower Commission that saved Reagan's political career at the cost of weakening the constitutional separation of powers, Beschloss describes it as "one that actually worked." Yes, if you are a fan of executive power running roughshod over constitutional limitations--or if you believe the Contras were the "moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers."