Sandinista National Liberation Front

This was truly one of the craziest schemes ever hatched up by an American presidential administration, which is really saying something.

The Contras were rebels seeking to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua, Because they were anti-communists and the Cold War was in full swing, the Reagan administration wanted to support them, but Congress passed a law saying that they couldn't.

So two administration officials, John Poindexter and Oliver North, got creative.

They hatched a plan to sell arms to the Iranian government, still technically our enemies, and then funnel some of the profits from those illegal arms sales to the Contras.

And my uncle was talking, it was probably in that same time period, but I was just a kid, maybe fifth or sixth grade or so.

And my uncle was telling my dad, you know, the Sandinistas are not actually as evil as the Reagan administration is making them out to be.

They're actually doing some really good things.

And that was completely opposed to what I was hearing at school.

Israel created Hamas just like we create our various little enemies too around the globe.

We've done the same thing, you know, like the Sandinistas and all those different ones and Nicaraguan stuff back in the day.

I don't think I'm saying that right, but anyway.

But anyway, so here's my thing too.

And folks might remember in the late 80s when President Reagan made his famous speech about tear down that wall and the end of the Cold War was coming about.

But there was a threat of communism In many countries in Central America, probably the most well-known was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas who were pro-communist and the Contras who were the freedom fighters who were trying to get rid of communism.

So there were a couple of very important foreign policy issues at play while Reagan was in office.

And as it turns out, the scandals related to both of those things So I've laid the groundwork for what was happening in the 1980s.

It controlled Nicaragua since the earlier parts of the twentieth century, and they finally fall in 1979.

And so then, uh, the, the Sandinistas take over, who are socialists, and, uh, they are hated by the US, and they use the Contras as a sort of terrorist army to try to take them down.

Uh, and they're not supposed to be arming them because Congress, you know, decides that that's not to happen.

But they do anyway, and they do this in part by selling weapons to Iran, which is also illegal because Iran is con- deemed a terrorist state and, and, uh, they, they have hostages of, of the US, and you're not supposed to negotiate with hostages.

I'm old enough to remember what we did in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

You know, I remember, you know, I remember the Iran-Contra hearings, you know, with the Sandinistas and the funneling of arms and the destabilization, you know, and us trying like hell to install public dictatorship wherever we could and our failed attempts to overthrow Castro.

And we, you know, We point to Cuba as this failed socialist state when a big, huge reason they failed was because we've been screwing with them for 60 plus years.

And we, well, way more than that.