Paging John Negroponte, Ollie North and E. Howard Hunt...
oops, almost let this one slip in under the radar screen... are we just REALLY slow learners or what...?
portraying ortega as a threat to the u.s. and the western hemisphere is as bogus as most of the rest of what passes for conventional wisdom in this country... it always helps when you can read some of what our so-called "enemies" have to say - in their own words... here's ortega himself, in a cnn interview conducted as part of a documentary series on the cold war:
Daniel Ortega in March 2005
the more things change, the more they remain the same... Submit To Propeller
Tweet
Mr. [Daniel] Ortega, one of United States' fiercest opponents during the cold war and the entrenched leader of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, has opened his fourth campaign for the presidency.
[...]
[T]he Bush administration is taking no chances and has begun concerted efforts to stop him.
The clearest shot across the bow came in March when the United States suspended some $2.3 million in military aid to Nicaragua to put pressure on the government, and an army with roots in the Sandinista movement, to destroy its arsenal of Soviet-made SA-7 missiles.
portraying ortega as a threat to the u.s. and the western hemisphere is as bogus as most of the rest of what passes for conventional wisdom in this country... it always helps when you can read some of what our so-called "enemies" have to say - in their own words... here's ortega himself, in a cnn interview conducted as part of a documentary series on the cold war:
Daniel Ortega in March 2005
[We took power] with great enthusiasm and a great desire to transform the country, but also with the worry that we would have to confront the United States, something which we regarded as inevitable. It's not that we fell into a kind of geopolitical fatalism with regard to the United States, but historically speaking the United States has been interfering in our country since the last century, and so we said, "The Yankees will inevitably interfere. If we try to become independent, the United States will intervene."
[...]
[A]round September of '79 I went to the United Nations, and before that I visited Washington and had a meeting with President Carter. During the meeting with President Carter, we proposed the development of a new kind of relationship with the United States. During our exchange, [he said that] the American government was worried about the implications of the revolution and that the conservative sections of the United States perceived it as a threat. We insisted that this was an opportunity, as I said to Carter, for the United States to make good the historical damage they had inflicted on our country. Our national anthem still includes the words "Yankee, the enemy of humanity," and we said to him that the only way to abolish that line would be for the attitude of the imperialist powers to change throughout the world, and specifically towards Nicaragua.
[...]
But [he] couldn't respond, because there was a public debate going on in the United States at that moment, and the conservatives were accusing Carter of opening the door to "communism," which was the word they used for these changes.
[...]
[Thomas Enders, a U.S. emissary] came to tell us very clearly that the United States was not going to allow a Soviet-Cuban communist bridgehead to be established in this continent. I said that we had a right to maintain relations with any other country, and that they should respect that right. And then he said that I should understand that they had to power to crush us.
[...]
The fact is that the United States is behind what has happened in Nicaragua, and what they did was to promote a confrontation between Nicaraguans. And we already know how many millions of dollars and armaments they approved for the war in Nicaragua, and the things that were openly discussed in the U.S. Congress about our ports, the contempt of the United States for international law, for the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the decisions of the International Court of Justice, and so on.
[...]
Without the United States it would have been impossible for Somoza's former Guard to regroup, and it was they who started to organize the first counterrevolutionary units. Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country.
[...]
[T]hey trained [the Contras]...to make the same speech to the people as Somoza had made. Somoza set himself up as dictator of our country in the name of anti-communism and the fight against communism, and according to Somoza, Sandino was a communist, as he was in the eyes of the United States. So the training they gave the Contras -- that whole manual the CIA prepared and all the rest of it -- was aimed at exacerbating an already backward mentality, because a population with more than 60 percent illiteracy is obviously a backward population; and a good part of the Contras themselves come from this same section of the population.
[...]
[The United States] invaded Panama, which had a great influence on the elections in our country. ... In December we had 47 percent support, with two months' campaigning still to do; [then] the invasion of Panama took place on December 23rd. And when we did a poll the following January, we had come down 10 points to 37 percent --- by which time we were one month away from the elections. ...
It wasn't a completely free election because there was open interference from the United States, from President Bush, in the form of financial and political support to our opponents, as well as threats that the blockade would not be lifted...
the more things change, the more they remain the same... Submit To Propeller
Tweet
posted by profmarcus at
4/12/2005
