Yesterday, GOP Rep. Ted Poe sat down with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on Perkins’s podcast Washington Watch where they both complained about the United States’s deal to swap prisoners with Iran. Both were disgusted with the negotiation, and said that Ronald Reagan would never agree to such a deal.
“Long gone are the days of Ronald Reagan when we said, ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists.’ Now we make all kinds of deals and it just appears that America comes out on the short end of the deal,” said Perkins.
Perkins apparently forgot about the Iran-Contra affair, the biggest scandal of Reagan’s presidency. The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran in exchange for Iran’s assistance in the Lebanon Hostage situation. The administration then used the profits to support the “Contras” in Nicaragua, fighting the Sandinista government.
Not only did Reagan “negotiate with terrorists” much more literally than Obama, the administration did it illegally and covered it up. Nearly a year later, information was leaked that confirmed the deal. The administration “lost” possibly damning paperwork before Reagan took responsibility, despite previously claiming to have no knowledge of it.
Salon’s Paul Rosenberg said that Iran-Contra “got zero net hostages released, and one dead hostage’s body dumped… in return for 2,512 TOW anti-tank missiles, 18 Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and more than 240 Hawk spare parts.”
Listen to the exchange below, via Right Wing Watch:
Featured image via screen grab
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