Author: leonid ilijc brezhnev Date: Subject: [Cerchio] Palast su Reagan
>Killer, Coward, Conman
>More Proof Only the Good Die Young
>by Greg Palast
>www.GregPalast.com >June 08, 2004
>
>You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in
>this case, someone's got to.
>
>Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.
>
>In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named
>Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one
>surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.
>
>People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan,
>big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to
>Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had
>elected.
>
>Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up
>and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they
>buried the mother of three.
>
>And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American
>marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped
>dog ... then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war
>was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down
>Cubans building an airport.
>
>I remember Nancy, a skull and crossbones prancing around in designer
>dresses, some of the "gifts" that flowed to the Reagans -- from hats to
>million-dollar homes -- from cronies well compensated with government
>loot. It used to be called bribery.
>
>And all the while, Grandpa grinned, the grandfather who bleated on about
>"family values" but didn't bother to see his own grandchildren.
>
>The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected,
>"faith in small town America" and "old-time values." "Values" my ass. It
>was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who
>couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing
>starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.
>
>"Small town" values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the
>Malibu mogul? I want to throw up.
>
>And all the while, in the White House basement, as his brain boiled away,
>his last conscious act was to condone a coup d'etat against our elected
>Congress. Reagan's Defense Secretary Casper the Ghost Weinberger with the
>crazed Colonel, Ollie North, plotted to give guns to the Monster of the
>Mideast, Ayatolla Khomeini.
>
>Reagan's boys called Jimmy Carter a weanie and a wuss although Carter
>wouldn't give an inch to the Ayatolla. Reagan, with that film-fantasy
>tough-guy con in front of cameras, went begging like a coward cockroach to
>Khomeini pleading on bended knee for the release of our hostages.
>
>Ollie North flew into Iran with a birthday cake for the maniac mullah --
>no kidding --in the shape of a key. The key to Ronnie's heart.
>
>Then the Reagan roaches mixed their cowardice with crime: taking cash from
>the hostage-takers to buy guns for the "contras" - the drug-runners of
>Nicaragua posing as freedom fighters.
>
>I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the
>bullhorn, "The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby
>orders this demonstration to disburse" ... and then came the teargas and
>the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.
>
>In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their
>kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even
>Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us
>were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with
>Texas, anyway?
>
>Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.
>
>In the deserted darkness of Chaguitillo, a TV blared. Weirdly, it was that
>third-rate gangster movie, "Brother Rat." Starring Ronald Reagan.
>
>Well, my friends, you can rest easier tonight: the Rat is dead.
>
>Killer, coward, conman. Ronald Reagan, good-bye and good riddance.
>
>
>Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy
>Money Can Buy. www.GregPalast.com
