unanimously in the house and says the united states cannot provide funds for the purpose of overthrowing the government of nicaragua. when congress tried to cut funding off, reagan believed it was his obligation, a moral obligation and obligation to american security to make sure the contras continued to get funding. the last of the u.s. marines left beirut today for the relative safety of the six fleet warships offshore ending a 17-month peace keeping mission which brought lebanon no closer to resolving its strife. lebanese factions realized their impact was very short lived. so these groups in lebanon began nabbing americans. in beirut, the united states was again the target of
the diversion. officials here are still bracing for the testimony next week of john poindexter. a man who unlike north met with the president every day. sometimes with no one else in the room. did you at any time tell the president that proceeds from the iranian arms sale were being used to support the contras? i don t i did not. the important point here is that on this whole issue, the buck stops here with me. if there had been evidence that reagan knew about the dwirs diversion of money from
government there. there was an audible gasp in the room. cynical, jaded reporters who have seen and heard everything gasped out loud. there it was, smoking gun proof of the connection between these two programs and the fact that part of this administration was using the money from the sales of arms to iran to fund the contras. the shadowy figure we ve been hearing about at the center of today s extraordinary revelations is oliver north. his facts, his public testimony is what the country is now waiting for. oliver north who worked in the west wing had this idea, well, since we re selling weapons to iran and there s certain profits that are coming from these weapons, and since we re not supposed to be selling these weapons so we can t announce the profits, these are basically off the books, let s take those profits and let s use them to support the contras. we can kill two birds with one
of the strategic places of some places and identify them. the events in lebanon and grenade, although oceans apart it provides direct support through a network of surrogates and terrorists. what he really cared about was this cancer on the world. so if there was a marxist regime anywhere and somebody was trying to take it down, he d be for them. perhaps by coincidence, the u.s. greatly expanded its military presence in central america. a big battleship joined two aircraft carriers in the waters off nicaragua while denying all the while anything special was happening. in nicaragua where there was a leftist regime in place, the united states was supporting the nicaraguan contras to overturn the sandinista government. they were an evil bunch. he was going to overthrow them and the heroes were the contras that were going to do it like our fathers at lexington and concord. we are complying with the law. we re complying with that fully. the boland amendment passed
i tried to engage him, like, on the contras. what are you gonna do? and all of a sudden, what i m hearing from him is this story about how when he and nancy were in the guest house of president marcos of the philippines, there was a giant spider on the ceiling, and the question was how to get him off without scaring nancy. and i m thinking, i don t get it. this is the most successful president in my lifetime. he seems to be out to lunch. what s going on? he says it was only later that he realized what eluded him about reagan. he had no need ever to show how smart he was. he knew exactly what i was asking. he didn t want to talk about it. and if you thought he was a dunce, he didn t care, cause he knew that he wasn t. it would also be some time before krauthammer embraced a conservative domestic policy, taxes, welfare, small government, and other reagan-esque sins. it took me about a decade. i was skeptical of tax cuts. i was skeptical of smaller government at the beginning