So, we can expect a war against Saddam’s Iraq in early 2008?

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 11 2006 16:37 utc | 4

yes, it’s almost like back to the future (cough, cough)…except it’s not sci-fi, and definitely not funny to see these same guys in power. but that’s what the U.S. has now…either the neo-cons or the Iran/Contra crew.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 11 2006 21:28 utc | 6

I don’t know about the cough, but if you feel feverishly hot, you might have gotten something from me.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 11 2006 21:45 utc | 8

…”either the neo-cons or the Iran/Contra crew.”
That just about sums it up doesn’t it. Stuck between a mafia and a cabal. Both ruthless, both dangerous both deadly criminal.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 11 2006 23:03 utc | 10

north already showed up in nicaragua last month. funny thing is, his appearance likely helped propel ortega & the sandinistas to victory.
extra credit on ollie, from our own backyard: the united states in central america, 1977-1992 by wm leogrande

North’s ignorance about Latin America produced some amusing moments. Once, while briefing NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, North showed Brokaw aerial reconnaissance photographs of Nicaragua and pointed out a baseball field. “The interesting thing here is the baseball diamond,” North said knowingly. “Nicaraguans don’t play baseball. Cubans play baseball.” Brokaw thought North was kidding; baseball had been Nicaragua’s national pasttime ever since the U.S. Marines occupied the country in the early twentieth century. But North was serious.
North’s understanding of the foreign policy process was unencumbered by nuance. He was a Marine, working on the president’s staff. The president was the commander-in-chief. Whatever the commander-in-chief wanted done, North would do it, no questions asked. … “This lieutenant colonel is not going to challenge a decision of the commander-in-chief,” he said, explaining his attitude. “If the commander-in-chief tells this lieutenant colonel to go stand in the corner and sit on his head, I will do so.”
At the NSC, North developed a reputation for hyperbole, usually in the service of his own image. “Ollie was about 30 to 50 percent bullshit,” a White House colleague said later. “He was notorious for constantly exaggerating his role in things.” He doctored his resume, claiming that he had been engaged in Special Operations in Vietname and had later been a Special Operations instructor when in fact he had done neither. In 1985, testifying under oath as a character witness for an NSC colleague accused of fraud, North lied shamelessly about his background, claiming to have been a Special Forces company commander in Vietnam (he was a regular infantry platoon commander” and to have been a premedical student at the University of Rochester before attending Annapolis (he was a freshman at the State University of New York.)
North bragged to people outside the White House about how close he was to President Reagan and how he met privately with the president in both the Oval Office and Reagan’s living quarters, sometime praying with him. He made up a story about flying combat missions in El Salvador when he didn’t even know how to fly a plane. He claimed he accompanied Secretary of State Alexander Haig in 1982 on his shuttle diplomacy to avert the Falklands/Malvinas war. And he claimed that in 1986, he called the president of Costa Rica on the telephone and read him the riot act for not being steadfast enough in support of the contras. None of it was true. “I never took anything he said at face value,” said CIA Central America Task Force chief Alan Fiers, “because I knew that he was bombastic and embellished the record, and threw curves, speedballs, and spitballs to get what he wanted.”
North also liked to play the martyr. He relished telling people that he worked twelve and sixteen hours a day, rarely saw his family, and hardly ever got a good night’s sleep. Even when giving mundane background briefings, he insisted that his name not be used because he would be in personal danger if the Cubans and Soviets identified him. “He thought there was a KGB plot to discredit him, publicize him, ruin him,” recalled colleague Neil Livingstone. When North’s dog died of natural causes, he told everyone it had been poisoned by leftists.
It was not entirely clear if North actually believed these delusions of grandeur, or if they were just ploys to persuade others of his importance. “He had a great deal of difficulty distinguishing between truth and fantasy,” wrote NSC consultant Michael Leeden, who worked with North on the arms sales to Iran. “He misled himself as effectively as he dazzled his audience.” Jacqueline Tillman, a former aide to Jeane Kirkpatrick, warned a colleague that North should not be on the NSC staff. “I’ve concluded that not only is he a liar, but he’s delusional, power-hungry, and a danger to the president and the country,” she said.
“Ollie North. God, the man could speak a blue haze of bullshit,” recalled the CIA’s National Intelligence Officer for Latin America John Horton. “And at times, I was convinced he was mad.”

Posted by: b real | Nov 13 2006 4:25 utc | 12