<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/59124558@N06/8186301309/” title=”Iran-Contra-begins by dengre.bj, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8206/8186301309_39c3140df1.jpg” width=”485″ height=”500″ alt=”Iran-Contra-begins”></a>
That quote in the headline is something that John McCain actually said this week. Really.
We all know that McCain is a bitter, angry old man and perhaps the sorest loser in the history of American politics, but that does not obscure the fact that at his center he is an ignorant, lying asshole.
At least 30,000 folks died as a result a direct result of the Contras and their war in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra funded covert project spilled over into El Salvador where another 75,000 people lost their lives and to Guatemala where CIA funded death squads helped helped to push the body count to over 200,000. The Iraq-Iran war that Team Reagan was funding with the scandal added another 450,000 to the count. And then there was the death of the guy who disclosed Reagan’s partnership with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
I think it would be fair to add the death tolls from some of the other covert wars or the Reagan era as well. Angola is a good example of one them. To help prop up Apartheid South Africa, Reagan funded a civil war there where over 500,000 people were killed (and where hidden US funded land mines are still killing people every day).
Then there are the legacy/blowback body counts of the Iran-Contra scandal. It allowed Iran to promote the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon: which led to the bombing of a US Marine barracks in 1983 and other acts of terror throughout the 1980s that the Reagan Administration responded to with gross negligence and weakness. Then there was the covert funding of Afghan rebels which led to the creation of al-Qaeda, the attacks on 9-11, the decade of the Bush Wars and the attack on Benghazi that John McCain is pretending to care about.
I can’t think of any American politician who disgusts me more than John McCain (including Tom DeLay).
Let me fix his quote for him: “Nobody who was white that I need to pretend to care about died in Iran-Contra.”
Cheers
Yutsano
Yesbut…no REAL Merkians died now did they? Well some Marines but hey broken eggs omelettes etc.
Seriously, this old fuck needs to retire and go enjoy his seven houses and whatever young blond he’s shtupping in lieu of Cindy.
NotMax
Somewhere in the recesses of his addled pate, I believe McCain thinks that if only Reagan had sent ice cream along with that key-shaped cake, Iran and the U.S. would have become, and still would be, BFFs.
Mattski
Wait I don’t understand. Are you saying no to giving a
christmasHoliday card for McCain this year?Jay in Oregon
Surely no Republican president would let an attack on an American embassy go unavenged.
Or let anything like that happen again.
Keith
This will pass. By next week, McCain will find something else that is the most egregious thing he’s seen in his entire career.
FlipYrWhig
Isn’t the number of Americans who died from being electrocuted in badly-built showers in Iraq several times larger than the number of Americans who have died from anything Obama has had anything remotely to do with?
peorgietirebiter
I thought of McCain watching Homeland when Brody mused that getting thrown into a hole and surviving didn’t make him a hero.
I think McCain may be getting close to the invisisble line of immunity that insufferable asses cross to their everlasting sorrow.
NotMax
@Keith
And when his meds wear off, wonder why everyone is up in arms about Obama and Ben Gazzara.
Original Lee
Of course, while he was giving this presser, he neatly avoids learning something he’d rather not know, I assume.
I totally believe no white Americans died because of Iran-Contra. Not.
the Conster
After listening to MSNBC’s lineup all day, they’re letting the money line from the presser yesterday stay buried – when Obama defends Rice and calls out Grampa Simpson McCain and Nancy Graham for attacking her because “she’s an easy target”. That’s shorthand for they’re picking on a girl, and that’s what’s really gotten their panties in a bunch today, because it’s true.
BGK
I guess we may never reaach peak wingnut, but we’re going to give it the old college try anyway?
fuddmain
Lawrence O’Donnell was talking about McCain and his BFF Graham last night. He believes they’re making this stink about Rice to get Obama to nominate Kerry, which would, potentially, get Scott Brown back in the Senate. I seriously doubt either of these assholes is smart enough to even come up with something that stupid. But, it does seem like they’re playing chicken with Obama. It’s likely Obama will call them on it, nominate Rice then laugh at their impotent asses when she gets confirmed.
Maude
The tell with McCain was Keating Five.
Dennis G.
@Original Lee: Well, there were those Nuns, but… Benghazi!!
Soylent Green
We are all Georgians now.
EconWatcher
@fuddmain:
O’Donnell is way overthinking it. They’re bitter about the election and the future prospects of their sorry excuse for a party, they need something to grouse about, and this is all they’ve got.
El Cid
Ask McCain if Reagan would have refused to help overthrow Qaddafi if it meant that U.S. personnel sent there afterwards might be at risk for their lives given the chaotic post over-throw environment.
pete
@fuddmain: Does anyone get the feeling that Obama is just a teensy lil bit aggravated?
danimal
McCain has a permanent seat on the Sunday shows. It’s time to go beyond noting this as a normal part of our national politics to showing utter contempt to these networks for enabling this crazed glory-hound to continue poisoning the national discourse.
Is there a war McCain doesn’t support? Is there an Obama decision McCain doesn’t oppose? How is McCain news? He is just a gasbag looking for a camera to belch out his foul-smelling garbage du jour. Thank God the American people were smart enough to toss him aside; if only Arizona would finish the job.
ETA: Nothing exemplifies McCain more than the fact that he was holding a press conference demanding info on Benghazi AT THE SAME TIME a closed door briefing on the topic was being given. The man is a toxic poseur.
gene108
FTFY.
Who cares if 500,000 savages in other countries die because of American actions?
We’re not responsible for what people in those countries do, because of our actions in those countries.
We need to worry about protecting Americans.
Also, too Benghazi is the worstest scandal evah in U.S. history because sooooooooo many people died.
Much worse than the lack of security at the Marine barracks in Beruit, in 1983, where 250+ Marines died or the Bush, Jr. administration not taking threats seriously about bin Laden* attacking the U.S. seriously and like 3,000 people died on 9/11/2001, let alone all the post-9/11/01 attacks on U.S. Consulates and Embassies.
*What gets me about Bush & Co. blowing off the bin Laden warnings is that al Qaeda had just ripped a hole in the side of a U.S. Navy vessel on Oct. 19, 2000, killing a bunch of seamen (which probably helped Bush, Jr. squeak out whatever he did to get the White House) and gobsmacked a couple of embassies in Africa in 1998; it’s not like this bin Laden led a group of folks, who never hurt anyone before….
The Moar You Know
We forgot that Romney/Ryan was a quantifiable huge improvement in candidate quality from McCain/Palin.
I know several lifelong Republican voters who happily pulled the lever for Romney – who voted Obama last time because they were utterly terrified of McCain. I might add that these folks were all ex-military.
liberal
Uh, the bombing had nothing to do with us getting involved in a civil war?
Furthermore, how is the bombing of a miltary target an act of terror?
El Cid
And if there was an Extraterrestrial-run war crimes and crimes against humanity tribunal which could hold the U.S. and its leadership to account, nearly the entire Reagan administration and many of its Congressional enablers would have been tried and then, I dunno, sentenced to some fancy machine to make them think about these things for the human equivalent of thousands of years. (I’m imagining more civilized aliens.)
fuddmain
@pete:
Press conference yesterday showed that. He knows there’s real grown-up problems to be solved and these assholes keep throwing tantrums over bullshit.
peorgietirebiter
Whatever the GOP is paying Kelly O’Donnell, it isn’t enough. She’s on MSNBC selling the point that the attacks on Rice was a tactic to trick Obama into responding, putting a spotlight on an issue that “both parties” have been frustrated by Obama’s unresponsiveness to their bi partisan concerns.
Got that? They don’t want to be ignorant pricks but that blah guy left them no choice. And remember, frankly- some Democrats are frustrated too. Watch the congressional hearings and tell me that holds up.
Brian S
@fuddmain:
Wouldn’t Deval Patrick name Kerry’s replacement? Or are they suggesting Brown would win the 2014 election to replace Kerry, even after whoever has taken Kerry’s place has been in office for two years? I don’t get the reasoning here, especially if it sounds like Kerry is leaving anyway, if not for State then for Defense.
JoyceH
Dana Bash reported a Democratic Source saying, they want to go there? want to put on a show of two old white guys beating up on a black woman?
So far, everyone jumping on the Susan Rice bashing bandwagon has run into a brick wall of journalists saying ‘uh… Condaleeza Rice?’ It doesn’t really seem to be working out for them, and their ‘that was different’ explanations are downright incoherent.
I dunno – didn’t Republicans used to be smarter than they are now?
huckster
@EconWatcher:
I like Larry, but surely he realizes that if kerry goes to defense instead of State, he still has to give up his senate seat
gene108
@EconWatcher:
Sufficiently aggressive grousing in this manner helped lead to voter backlash in 1994 that swept Gingrich & Co. into control of the House, eventually leading to the impeachment of President Clinton, as well as Republican control of the Senate and George Bush, Jr. getting control of the White House by January 2001.
I’m just saying this isn’t to be taken lightly.
Keep Benghazi front and center long enough and whatever credibility President Obama has rebuilt for Democrats, as being strong on national defense, will be eroded with enough voters to maybe matter in 2014.
Or aggressive grousing is all Republicans know how to do and their lack of new ideas may finally back fire with the electorate who is clamoring for something new, but I’m not holding my breath and waiting for that to happen.
fuddmain
@Brian S: From what I understand, Patrick appoints a caretaker to the seat until a special election is held within 160 days.
Seems like Kerry’s leaving one way or the other.
gorillagogo
Sorry to pick nits, but the Iran Contra scam wasn’t even hatched until Reagan’s second term, well after the bombings in Lebanon. Ollie North and company began planning it sometime in early 1985.
EDIT: To clarify, the weapons sales to Iran didn’t start until 1985. They were supporting the Contras well before that.
Dennis G.
@gorillagogo: True on the text-book start of the official version of the Iran-Contra scandal, but that investigation contained it to a couple of years. The project started when Reagan came to the White House. Most of it is just another unexamined scandal where the participants got off and returned to inflict more harm on the world.
McCain is familiar with this merry-go-round as he played a role in so many scandals from Iran-Contra to the Keating Five to Jack Abramoff and more.
kay
What I don’t understand about McCain and his media fan club is this: is someone stopping them from working on this? Is “talking on TV” now the same as “investigating”?
GO FIND OUT. They’ve been lobbing allegations for weeks now. When do we get to the “work” part of this story? It’s as if the allegations ARE the story.
Patricia Kayden
@the Conster: A Black girl at that. Hope President Obama nominates her just to see what they’ll do. They don’t have enough votes to stop her.
I’ve never liked McCain. Was always puzzled when people on the Left went on and on about him being such a great politician. Particularly remember him with Jon Stewart yukking it up on the Daily Show.
He’s a douchebag. Glad that he’s showing that so clearly now that I’m hearing people say things like, “He was always a nice guy. I don’t understand why he’s acting like this.” Yeah right.
Aidan
Iran-Contra was only discovered after the Sandinistas shot down an American plane attempting to deliver supplies to the Contras. Three people died in that crash.
catclub
@Patricia Kayden: I’m betting there is footage of Lindsey Graham praising, to the skies (pun intended), another woman named Rice who got a promotion after a terrorist attack.
El Cid
@Dennis G.: Part of the official and bipartisan limit on the investigation (which did allow it to happen, but also constituted it largely as protecting all issues preferred to be left out of bounds) was confining to a very certain time period and to the very limited criminal activities defined as the core issues to be investigated.
Everything is was just, well, ‘foreign policy,’ in which you can do anything you want to anyone out there, as long as you don’t cross too many bounds with other parts of U.S. government and/or bureaucracy.
Roy G.
I consider Gary Webb, the author of Dark Alliance, and investigative reporter who uncovered the links between the CIA and cocaine sold on the streets of LA, to be a casualty of Iran Contra. How many suicides take two shots?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Alliance-Contras-Cocaine-Explosion/dp/1888363932
Anthony
@Roy G.: You would be surprised how many suicides take more than one shot, actually.
dollared
Dennis, thank you for this. In my life, I’ve been lucky enough to meet dozens of people from Central America, and I’ve been able to spend some time in the Guatemalan countryside. What we did there is unforgivable. And largely still not known north of the Rio Grande.
Jamey
Hey, none of the Keating Five died in the S&L Scandal, but that doesn’t mean we can’t wish…
fuckwit
I am glad you mentioned the Lebanon car-bombing. That was, IIRC, by far the deadliest assault on a US embassy in history. A lot of Marines and diplomats were killed.
Reagan didn’t get pounded by scandalmongering conspiracy theory questions on it, like Obama did after Benghazi.
I’ve been waiting for Obama to compare it to Lebanon. After Lebanon, we secured facilities more– that’s why there are concrete pillars in front of the White House and other government buildings. After Benghazi, we will secure our facilities more, though it’s not so easy.
Why the wingnuts have gone so single-mindedly berserk over this is beyond me.
James E. Powell
@fuddmain:
I think it is less outcome-specific than hoping that Kerry’s seat opens up. It is the normal Republican move after they have been waxed at the polls. They choose something the president wants to do and they go after it like demons. They behave as if it is the End of America! They get at least half of the corporate press/media to ride along. This almost always results in a Republican win. They do, after all, own most of the corporate press/media. And the Democratic presidents often cave.
Now, from his remarks and demeanor at the press conference, I did not get the impression that Obama is going to cave on Susan Rice. But we shall see. Somebody, and it might as well be President Obama, needs to take McCain and Graham down.
SnowRider
John McCain’s home state of Arizona is where Al-Qaeda first got their foothold in the USA in the 1980’s. Ask McCain about that. McCain was FOR arming the Syrian rebels(Al-Qaeda) against Libya. Someone tell McCain to stuff a sock in it.