KILLER, COWARD, CON-MAN
GOOD RIDDANCE, GIPPER ...
MORE PROOF ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
Sunday, June 6, 2004
by Greg Palast
www.GregPalast.com


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 disperse" ?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.
----------------------
Bob Schwartz post