{"id":162266,"date":"2015-06-27T03:42:55","date_gmt":"2015-06-27T03:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/forgetting-reagans-worst-scandal\/"},"modified":"2015-06-27T03:42:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T03:42:55","slug":"forgetting-reagans-worst-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/forgetting-reagans-worst-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgetting Reagan\u2019s Worst Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"109.64307838933\">\n<p>The mainstream U.S. media shies from direct criticism of conservative icon Ronald Reagan, so the history of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal often gets forgotten even amid discussions about the U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, as Sam Husseini notes.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-15324\"\/>By Sam Husseini<\/p>\n<p>Much of the media has been abuzz with President Barack Obama\u2019s announcement that, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/watch-obama-announce-new-hostage-policy-n381011\"><u>NBC put it<\/u><\/a>: \u201cthe government will no longer threaten to criminally prosecute families of American hostages who pay ransom to get loved ones back from such groups as ISIS\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The NBC report \u2013 and virtually every other report on this subject I\u2019ve seen \u2013 have made no mention of when the U.S. government did pay for hostages in the Iran-Contra Affair. That\u2019s when the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran in exchange for hostages and illegally used the funds for the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10404\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"34\"><a href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/reagan-first-inaugural.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10404\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?55ac53\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/reagan-first-inaugural-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"President Ronald Reagan, delivering his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981.\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10404\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/reagan-first-inaugural-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"President Ronald Reagan, delivering his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981.\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Ronald Reagan, delivering his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>An extreme example of media mis-reporting was Jake Tapper who\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/1411\/18\/cg.01.html\"><u>claimed on Nov. 18, 2014<\/u><\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s a policy the U.S. government has never wavered on. America does not negotiate with terrorists. You have heard them say that, but now the Obama administration is ordering a full review of how it does deal with hostage situations in light of recent criticism from families of Americans brutally murdered by ISIS terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, I\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/samhusseini\/status\/534816356752191488\"><u>tweeted to Tapper<\/u><\/a>: \u201cnever wavered on negotiating for hostages? I guess Iran-Contra didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jaketapper\/status\/534816878615887872\"><u>tweeted back<\/u><\/a>: \u201cgood point, we should we have couched that\u201d I <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/samhusseini\/status\/534827338551558144\"><u>responded<\/u><\/a>: \u201cNo corrections on cable. Cause, 24-hour news.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And indeed, no correction on was forthcoming. Because it\u2019s not like CNN has a lot of time to fill to educate, especially younger viewers about what happened in Iran-Contra.<\/p>\n<p>Particularly insidious is Tapper\u2019s notion that he should have \u201ccouched that\u201d differently. Firstly, it avoids acknowledging that what he said was false: \u201cIt\u2019s a policy the U.S. government has never wavered on.\u201d That\u2019s just a brazen lie.<\/p>\n<p>But in a subtle way, his response is even worse. Tapper is would seem, is tacitly blaming himself for not finessing the lie better. Perhaps he thinks it&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/06\/26\/forgetting-reagans-worst-scandal\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The mainstream U.S. media shies from direct criticism of conservative icon Ronald Reagan, so the history of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal often gets forgotten even amid discussions about the U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, as Sam Husseini notes. By Sam Husseini Much of the media has been abuzz with President Barack Obama\u2019s announcement that, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-162266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}