- 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
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