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It's important at times like these to not become confused. Ronald Reagan is dead. Don't be confused by the frail, sickly man with Alzheimer's that we have known since 1994. We offer this obituary as a laundry list of Reagan's evils. The great 'actor' had many and God knows you won't be hearing about them in the mainstream press. Here are the top 10:
1. CENTRAL AMERICAN POLICY
-In the name of rooting out Communism, the United States embarked on a policy of war crimes and genocide in the region. In Guatemala alone, tens of thousands of people were disappeared by their American directed government. It was the same for El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Today, many of the important people involved in these crimes are working for the George W. Bush administration.
2. MORTGAGING AMERICA'S FUTURE
-It wasn't wartime, but Reagan managed to more than triple the U.S. national debt during his time in office. At the same time, he left virtually no social program untouched. This left payments on the national debt the largest single item in the budget and has left America with a legacy that will last for hundreds of years.
3. DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE MENTALLY ILL
-Most care facilities (hospitals) for the mentally ill closed under the Reagan administration. This left "50,000 homeless mentally ill" on the streets in California alone. Across the country, the costs have been catastrophic.
4. REAGAN POLICY IN THE IRAN/IRAQ WAR
Here Reagan played a double game to keep either side from winning any of the crucial oil producing territory. The Soviet Union's support of Iraq forced to U.S. to secretly begin supplying Baghdad with weapons and expertise allowing Saddam Hussein to develop weapons of mass destruction which were eventually used against the Iranians and his own people. At the same time, we secretly sold weapons to Iran in order to fund our activities in Central America. The war was disastrous for both countries, stalling economic development and disrupting oil exports, and costing an estimated million lives. Iraq was left with serious debts to its former Arab backers, including $14 billion loaned by Kuwait, a debt which contributed to Hussein's 1990 decision to invade Kuwait. Reagan's actions prolonged the war and helped make it far more devastating.
5. STAR WARS
This didn't end the Cold War. Instead it wasted billions of American Taxpayer's dollars on an utter boondoggle. As such, Star Wars can be seen as a massive redistribution of wealth program from American tax payers to defese constractors.
6. THE IRAN/CONTRA AFFAIR
More criminality from Reagan and company. The Reagan administration, contrary to acts of Congress (specifically the 1982-1983 Boland Amendment), ferried funds and weaponry to the Contras gained by the sale of arms to Iran. The Contras, led by former members of the National Guard of the overthrown Somoza regime (1936-1979) received weapons and training from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, especially in guerrilla tactics such as destroying infrastructural elements and assassination... The United States Congress then on November 18, 1987 issued its final report on the affair, which stated that Reagan bore "ultimate responsibility" for wrongdoing by his aides and his administration exhibited "secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law." Oliver North and John Poindexter were indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States on March 16, 1988. Poindexter was convicted on several felony counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and altering and destroying documents pertinent to the investigation. He avoided jail time due to a legal technicality. Poindexter, Abrams, Negroponte and many others now work for George W. Bush.
7. INVADING GRENADA
In 1979 a bloodless coup, led by the revolutionary Maurice Bishop, toppled the government of Grenada to establish a communist society. Under Bishop, Grenada began construction of an international airport with the help of Cuba. To begin to establish a case for invasion, seven months before the operation began, Ronald Reagan pointed to this airport and several other sites as evidence of the potential threat posed by Grenada towards the United States. Reagan accused Grenada of constructing facilities to aid a Soviet/Cuban military build-up in the Caribbean.
Prime Minister Bishop went to Washington, D.C., to dispel these fears, but his government was later overthrown in a violent coup... The Cuban based turned out to be an airfield for tourism and the Medical School that was under 'threat' turned out to be under no threat at all. These Reagan theatrics helpd distract people from the killing of 242 marines in one bomb attack in Beirut.
8. THE UNDECLARED WAR ON LIBYA
The conflict began with aerial combat between two Libyan aircraft and two American naval aircraft over the Gulf of Sidra in August 1981, as the US Navy was conducting a Freedom of Navigation (FON) exercise to challenge Libyan claims to control what was legally international waters This was followed by a series of Libyan sponsored terrorist incidents, most notably the airport massacres in Rome and Vienna in late 1985 and further reassertions of claims to the Gulf of Sidra , this time with threats to attack any naval forces that crossed a so-called "Line of Death," a challenge the Reagan administration quickly took up. This resulted in another FON exercise (Prairie Fire) in March 1986 by the Navy, during which a couple of Libyan naval vessels were destroyed. A spate of terrorist attacks followed, culminating in the bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in Berlin on 5 April 1986, with over 200 casualties, among them 78 Americans. The conflict with Libya culminated a week later with a raid by US Navy carrier aircraft and Air Force bombers operating from Britain against selected targets, including Qaddafi's own residence, killing his adopted four year old daughter. The conflict then subsided, ending with a bizarre air battle off Tobruk on Jan. 4, 1989, in which two F-14's shot down two more Libyan aircraft ( Source).
9. THE RESPONSE TO AIDS
The conservative climate enabled the Reagan administration's indifference toward AIDS. The administration undercut federal efforts to confront AIDS in a meaningful way by refusing to spend the money Congress allocated for AIDS research. In the critical years of 1984 and 1985, according to his White House physician, Reagan thought of AIDS as though "it was measles and it would go away." Reagan's biographer Lou Cannon claims that the president's response to AIDS was "halting and ineffective." ( Source) His actions directly led to the rapid spread of AIDS in the United States. How many deaths did this indirectly cause?
10. REAGAN'S BITBURG VISIT
This had to be one of the lowest and most insensitive things he ever did. Most Americans had never heard of the SS, an abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, an elite unit of German soldiers, until May 1985 when President Ronald Reagan outraged the Jewish Community and created a huge controversy when he decided to bypass an invitation to tour the concentration camp at Dachau on a state visit to Germany and instead opted to visit a military cemetery in Bitberg, where German SS soldiers were buried. In defense of his visit, Reagan said, "There's nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery where those young men are victims of Nazis also...They were victims, just as surely as the victims of the concentration camps." Reagan had gotten his start in politics when he worked with the Screen Actor's Guild to expose Communists in the movie industry in the McCarthy era. The Schutzstaffel (Protection Squad) was started in April 1925 as a unit of personal body guards for Adolf Hitler who needed protection from the Communist protesters who tried to disrupt his political speeches for his Fascist party, the National Socialist German Workers Party, better known to Americans as the Nazis.
The occasion for Reagan's visit was the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II and he wanted to forget the Holocaust and show that Germany was now our Ally and a member of NATO. His purpose in visiting the graves of these German SS soldiers was to "demonstrate reconciliation and friendship" with the country that had murdered 6 million Jews. However, the soldiers that he was honoring at Bitberg were not the guards at the concentration camps, the infamous Death's Head unit, which was only one part of the SS; Reagan was paying tribute to the soldiers of the Waffen-SS (Weapons SS), an elite fighting unit which included volunteers from many countries who fought the Communists in Hitler's war against the Soviet Union, something that Reagan could certainly relate to...( Source
Rest in peace Mr. President.
Re-posted by permission of ME, copyright owner.
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