George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Chapter -XVIII- Iran- Contra
``What pleases the prince has the force of law.''
--Roman law
``As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally.''
-- Gestapo officer Werner Best@s1
We cannot provide here a complete overview of the Iran-Contra affair. We shall attempt,
rather, to give an account of George Bush's decisive, central role in those events, which
occurred during his vice-presidency and spilled over into his presidency. The principal
elements of scandal in Iran-Contra may be reduced to the following points:
1) the secret arming of the Khomeini regime in Iran by the U.S. government,
during an official U.S.-decreed arms embargo against Iran, while the U.S.
publicly denounced the recipients of its secret deliveries as terrorists and
kidnappers--a policy initiated under the Jimmy Carter presidency and accelerated
by the Reagan-Bush administration;
2) the Reagan-Bush administration's secret arming of its `` Contras '' for war
against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, while such aid was explicitly
prohibited under U.S. law;
3) the use of communist and terrorist enemies--often armed directly by the Anglo-
Americans--to justify a police state and covert, oligarchical rule at home;
4) paying for and protecting the gun-running projects with drug- smuggling,
embezzlement, theft by diversion from authorized U.S. programs, and the ``
silencing '' of both opponents and knowledgeable participants in the schemes; and
5) the continual, routine perjury and deception of the public by government
officials pretending to have no knowledge of these activities; and the routine
acquiescence in that deception by Congressmen too frightened to oppose it.
When the scandal broke, in late 1986 and early 1987, George Bush maintained that he
knew nothing about these illegal activities; that other government officials involved in
them had kept him in the dark; that he had attended no important meetings where these
subjects were under discussion. Since that time, many once- classified documents have
come to light, which suggest that Bush organized and supervised many, or most, of the
criminal aspects of the Iran-Contra adventures. The most significant events relevant to
George Bush's role are presented here in the format of a chronology. At the end of the
chronology, parts of the testimony of George Bush's loyal assistant Donald Gregg will be
provided, to allow for a comparison of the documented events with the Bush camp's
account of things. Over the time period covered, the reader will observe the emergence of
new structures in the U.S. government: