this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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United States | News & Politics

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[–] dhork@lemmy.world 75 points 1 month ago
[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 43 points 1 month ago

"He has experience so we can trust him!"

-Fox News viewers

[–] Fontasia@feddit.nl 41 points 1 month ago (1 children)

To be fair, he's annoyed at them having missiles, he had no problem selling them as long as he could profit.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

okay, no hypocrisy then

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 32 points 1 month ago

He wants Iran to not have missiles because then Iran will buy his missiles

[–] Pistcow@lemm.ee 30 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

I hope that's the American Dad school house rock. The kids popping as he says landmines is a good stealth joke.

[–] Vinny_93@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Ha, came here for this and was not disappointed.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Those who do US crimes get airtime; those who expose them get canceled.

[–] PaulBunyan@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Those white and rich who do US crimes get airtime

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)

You don’t have to be rich or white, you only have to be useful in furthering US state propaganda. Condi Rice is still gets plenty of airtime.

[–] PaulBunyan@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You don’t have to be rich

Proceeds to name multi-millionaire.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I was naming a non-white person. Also, people who carry water for US imperialism tend to be well compensated. You don’t have to be rich to do it, but you will likely get rich by doing it.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world 26 points 1 month ago

Giving this traitor a television platform instead of a prison cell, was one giant step in making Republicans feel untouchable, no matter how poorly they behaved. Even treason is excused, and rewarded.

[–] Gowron_Howard@lemmy.world 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Republicans don’t go to jail for committing crimes.

[–] Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

we think it started with trump, but Reagan did so much illegal BS.

He should have spent the rest of his life in jail for trafficking cocaine

[–] Grapho@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

He spent the rest of his lif living with Nancy Reagan so I think he kinda got his due

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world 4 points 1 month ago

When Nancy Reagan was a struggling actress in Hollywood, she had a reputation for giving the best blowjobs in town. True story.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Lmao no fucking way, really?

[–] Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

there's more to the story, like using the US military to traffic cocaine

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well, it didn't really happen like that, but yeah, the Iran-Contra Scandal contributed heavily to the onset of the crack cocaine epidemic. The fact that they couldn't use the US military in this operation is why cocaine became involved.

They needed to smuggle illegally purchased weapons to Central America, so they hired drug smugglers to smuggle guns in the other direction. What does a drug smuggler do after he's dropped off his weapons, and finds himself in Central America with an empty plane, a fistful of dirty money, and CIA cover?

That's right, he fills it full of cocaine, flies it back to America, and quintuplets his money. And they did it over and over and over, until there was so much coke on the streets of America, that it went from being the drug of the wealthy and celebrities, and became the drug of the ghetto.

And how do we know this? Because smuggler Eugene Hasenfus was captured, and he spilled the entire story.

The only question was: Was the CIA aware of the drug smuggling? Some think that they used it to raise even more money for their cause, but I've never seen any real evidence of that, other than speculation. OTOH, I find it hard to believe that they didn't know their pilots were smuggling cocaine back to America. If they didn't know, they should have, they're the CIA. Besides, it's not exactly a big leap to realize they would do this. They didn't hire commercial cargo pilots to do some side gigs, they hired drug smugglers specifically because they were smugglers. They aren't going to fly an empty plane home. Of course, they're going to smuggle Coke (or weed), back in their planes. Duh.

[–] Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

forgot to mention that Congress made a specific law against funding the CONTRA. And Reagan went around it by illegally smuggling weapons and drugs for them.

lol wow, so that’s where Tom Clancy got that plot point for Without Remorse

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

And dumping it in marginalized neighborhoods and starting the '90s Crack epidemic.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world 8 points 1 month ago

It's a wild tale. I once told the entire thing to a friend, who listened through the whole story, then said "Did that really happen?"

[–] lol_idk@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Related to nothing but Ollie, I rode an elevator with him and some police in the US courthouse in DC during his trial

[–] LookBehindYouNowAndThen@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What does "opportunistic shitheel with a side of bacon" smell like?

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

George HW Bush pardoned him on the advice of William Barr, giving Barr the start of a career helping presidents avoid responsibility for their illegal activities.

[–] ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

well, you can't argue that he hasn't learnt his lesson.

[–] Frozengyro@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

You really think he wouldn't sell them missiles again if he thought he would get away with it?

[–] Glytch@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago
[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Hear me out, theoretically this is actually cool?

Like, theoretically, take away the Fox propaganda and shameless lack of disclosure. Picture this guy presenting himself as a CI, like a convicted hacker, former cartel, defector or something. He has real experience with Iran, missiles, the whole Contra affair. He knows what they’d do with them, how they get them, what the buyers are like because he shamelessly sold them.

That’d be a cool perspective.

It’s of course not reality, but still.

[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Theoretically sure. But the regime he sold it to go toppled like three times over. So it's not the same people anymore and the context he could provide is out of date and ... checks notes still based on his treasonous actions.

[–] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago

No. The current constitution is what they got after the revolution in 1979. Khomeini was supreme leader until 1989. Khamenei somehow got himself appointed to successor just in time. The successor he replaced was against mass executions and stuff. Funny how it goes.

[–] Broken@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

I'm sure as hell not defending him, but your point is valid and why him being against them having missiles isn't necessarily a contradiction. "Them" isn't the same them that he sold to. Again, not defending him and I haven't listen to anything he's said recently to know his stance (nor do I really care to), but just keeping my own logic in check.

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[–] UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Heard about him in Killer Mike's Reagan song. Great song

Oliver North, a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel, played a key role in the Iran-Contra affair, a major political scandal during the Reagan administration. He was involved in the sale of weapons to Iran, with the profits being diverted to support the Contras in Nicaragua, despite a congressional ban on funding the Contras. 

[–] PixelPilgrim@lemmings.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Do they put anyone on screen for ratings?

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 5 points 1 month ago

Well Fox News has been, since inception, the propaganda arm of the GOP. So not only will they do anything to get and keep eyeballs, they have a deficit of ethics and ethical contributors. So if they need to spray paint a shit log and call it a gold nugget then that's what they're gonna keep on doing.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Just another bucket of slime sloshing whichever way gets him a seat at the table.

[–] SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Land of the free.

[–] sartalon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Don't get me wrong. The Iran - Contra affair was a terrible circumvention of U.S. law and North deserved to go to prison and Reagan should have been impeached.

However, this post is a mischaracterization of that event.

This was part of an overall plan to get American hostages released.

That being said, we sold arms to Iran, who was fighting Iraq (a U.S. ally at the time), and one of the intermediaries we used was fucking Israel.

Yup, Israel helped us sell arms to Iran. So Iran can turn around and use them against an ally.

North was then made a fall guy.

I was younger when this happened but I recall, at the time, it was characterized as we just sold them parts for their airplanes and defensive arms.

Man, we just can't stop fucking our face with our own foot.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This was part of an overall plan to get American hostages released.

It was part of an overall plan to commit treason in order to sabotage Carter by preventing the hostages from being released before the election so that Reagan would win.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're mixing up your Reagan-era Iran scandals.

First, there was the Iran Hostage Crisis, where Iranians stormed the US embassy and took a bunch of hostages in 1979. While I have no doubt there was Republican fuckery going on, Carter really didn't do himself any favors with his handling of that. The hostages were finally released, after more than a year, the day Reagan was inaugurated

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

Iran-Contra was a scandal where the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran (who was fighting Iraq, then an American ally), circumventing Congress. They then gave the money to the Contras, a group of rebels in Nicaragua, again circumventing Congress:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

You are correct that part of the goal was to release hostages, but those hostages were taken by the Lebanese well after Reagan's first election.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

This reminds me how there’s a world of difference between learning history and living it. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Walter Cronkite saying every evening that it’s the XXXth day of the Iran hostage crisis. And still I remember Ollie North’s trial. There’s no way I’d mix them up.

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[–] DandomRude@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I'm hardly surprised - just seems like a US thing. I mean, who else would leave it up to Trump of all people to decide whether the Epstein files should be made public?

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Some background, as memes inevitably lack details:

During the Reagan administration an Islamist military group called Hezbollah took some Americans hostage in Lebanon. Oliver North was one of a group of Reagan staffers who came up with a plan to sell arms to Iran in exchange for help persuading Hezbollah to free these hostages. North's contribution to the scheme was to use money from the arms sale to fund the Contras - an unrelated US-backed group of rebels in Nicaragua (freedom-fighters or terrorists, depending on your POV). It was all negotiated in secret because the President didn't have the authority to conduct such deals.

When the plot leaked out there was a congressional investigation, in which many documents disappeared, and North was the fall guy. I remember him testifying at length on television, sitting stonefaced and ramrod straight in uniform, a caricature of the perfect soldier loyal to his chain of command. There were diagrams of the office showing the locations of desks, phones, the shredder, etc... An office underling named Fawn Hall was also interviewed extensively on TV because she had shredded/hidden documents and was also extremely hot.

North ended up doing prison time for his part in the whole thing. Hall pursued a brief modeling career, dated Rob Lowe, married the fomer manager of The Doors, and according to Wikipedia was last known to be working in a Hollywood bookstore.

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