Iran+contra+Affair+-+Mrkinguzoma

**//__Iran Contra Affair__//** The incident gained its roots from the American battle against communism and how we were trying to eradicate the anti-capitalistic system. In Nicaragua the county was in a conflict that pitted the Nicaraguan capitalist called the Contras versus the Cuban backed Nicaraguan communists called the Sandinistas. This conflict had shown brightly in the Reagan administration as a threat to American capitalism. Reagan thought of the Contras as the Nicaraguan equivalent of the United States’ founding fathers (Wolf). America would start to back the contras in this conflict. During the event, the Iranians had mad a secret request to buy American-made weaponry. Reagan however wasn’t too pleased with this deal because of the fact that seven Americans were at the time being held hostage by Iranian insurgents in Lebanon. National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane said that the deal could help out our relationship with Iran and Lebanon thus proving benefited to the task of free the hostages but Reagan wasn’t going to, in his words, “Negotiate with terrorist”. Then the plan arose to trade weapons for hostages. The US would send American weaponry for money and, in turn, the American hostages. This plan divided the administration. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of state George Shultz opposed the action while McFarlane, CIA director William Casey and Reagan himself were for the plan. The plan passed due the presidents backing but didn’t go as planned. When the US sent its first round of weapons only three of the seven hostages were releases and not only that but later the three released hostages were replaced by //three// more. And to add to that, the president was under scrutiny about the missing funds transferred from Iranian government for weapons. They found out that the National Security counsel was siphoning the missing money illegal to the contras in Nicaragua for aid. They assumed the president would not mind. Later a government agency investigated the incident a state that Reagan in no way was apart of these affairs. Those directly involved were relieved of there duties that would include the assumed main operator Lt. Co. Oliver North. Eight years later an independent counsel Lawrence Walsh investigated the incident and came up with enough evidence to charge fourteen government officials with cover-up crimes.

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