Page 2/The Battalion/Monday, December 1, 1986
The Battalion
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Ken Sury, Sports Editor
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A big Meese-stake
The Iran arms deal has become a cancerous foreign policy tumor
on the Reagan administration’s Teflon exterior. The latest malig
nant act was the naming of Attorney General Edwin Meese III to
head the investigation into the arms deal — a measure that’s certain
to determine that, in this case, justice is not only blind, it’s deaf and
dumb too.
Like an onion, the layers of Reagan’s foreign policy have been
peeled back, each time revealing a different form of questionable ac
tivity.
Now the president, busy firing staff members to distance himself
from any wrongdoing, has asked his old friend Meese to do a little
peeling of his own. Selecting Meese was both strategic and superflu
ous. Slicing into Reagan’s foreign policy dealings surely will bring
tears to Meese’s eyes. After all, the attorney general has been the
president’s friend and crony for more than 20 years. He will be care
ful where he cuts and how deeply.
The American people deserve answers, not the biased babblings
of the president’s right-hand lawyer. Even Reagan confidant Henry
Kissinger has stressed the need to “get all the facts out quickly, and
punish the wrongdoers.”
“I can be loyal to the president and loyal to the country, too,”
Meese claims. But when these interests lie in different directions,
where Meese’s loyalties lie is no secret. As one who helped set up the
early stages of the Iran-Contra pipeline, Meese may wind up in the
dual role of prosecutor and defense attorney.
Already the attorney general, claiming to have known about
wrongdoings since Nov. 22, did not attempt to bar fired National Se
curity Council director Oliver North from NSC offices until last
Tuesday, possibly giving North a chance to shred vital, incriminating
documents.
It’s time to turn the arms deal investigation over to a special pros
ecutor. For the sake of national well-being, the Reagan administra
tion needs to resolve the investigation as quickly as possible. Meese is
not the man.fo rescue the administration’s foreign policy, mired in
murky bureaucratic coverups.
We need an objective sheer to cut through the deception of the
foreign policy onion. Tears won’t distort justice’s insight — she’s
blind. Eel Meese is not, although he may see no evil.
Horns find scapegoat
By firing Head Coach Fred Akers, the University of Texas has
summed up Vince Lombardi’s maxim: Winning isn’t everything, it’s
the only thing. But it’s the university, not Akers, that has everything
to lose from the head coach’s dismissal.
School rivalries aside, Akers deserved better than to be booted
out of his position merely because Texas had its first losing season in
30 years. Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds says Akers was fired be
cause the school was seeking “new energy and leadership,” but it’s
more likely it was looking for a scapegoat to carry the blame for a los
ing season.
Winning seasons come and go — sometimes the cycles may be 30
years, sometimes only two or three — but a good coach is a long-term
investment. As Texas A&M learned, firing a coach every losing sea
son or two perpetuates the string of losing seasons.
Ironically, whoever UT selects to inject this “new energy and
leadership” probably will have to endure several more losing seasons
before a winning team can be built.
Akers’ 73.5 percent winning record at UT will be attractive to
other schools seeking coaches. We only hope he can find more toler
ant pastures than the fair-weather fields of UT.
Instead of adhering to the f amous words of Vince Lombardi, UT
should have heeded a different maxim: Don’t fix what ain’t broken.
i ( 3OOD LJORKy MEN!
iVs ftooirr T1M& Eyonr ,
TMosr CHAIRS fUGrtT-
lyn^uaM
Opinion
Real trouble
is closer ties
with arms deal
to the Contras
For more than
six years President
Reagan has held
the American
public in the palm
of his hand. Dur
ing that time, he
has tried to return
the country to a
period of normal
ity, void of the tur
moil of the 1960s,
the embarrass-
Craig
Renfro
ment of Vietnam and the presidential
atrocities of Watergate.
But recent turns of events have
proved that Reagan is nothing more
than a lot of hot rhetoric backed by little
fuel. First off, Reagan approved of the
controversial arms sales to Iran — a
country that backs terrorism. This is
something that Reagan said he would
never do, yet he defied his own policy.
Now it has been learned that some of
the money from the Iranian arms sales
has been diverted to the U.S.-backed Ni
caraguan Contra rebels. This is a move
that Reagan says he knew nothing
about.
But initially Reagan said he knew
nothing about the Iranian arms situa
tion, either. How long will it be before
he confesses that he knew something
about this? Probably in chapter 10 of his
memoirs, “How I Started the Nicara
guan War.”
In true Watergate fashion Reagan
fired National Security Council director
Lt. Col. Oliver North and received the
resignation of Vice Adm. John Poin
dexter, the president’s deputy assistant
for national security affairs.
This is nothing more than a desper
ate attempt by Reagan to take some of
the heat off of him and make it look like
those two men had total control of Cen
tral American policy. Surely Reagan
doesn’t expect the American public to
buy this. But then again he might be
cause we have believed him for so long.
U.S. funding of Contra activities was
banned in 1984, and was illegal this year
until Oct. 1, when Congress approved
% 100 million of aid to the Contras. 1 low-
ever, during that time North operated
more than one clandestine operation to
the Contras.
North has been linked to the Contra
air-supply operation based at El Salva
dor’s Ilopango military airport. This
came to light on Oct. 5 when an Ameri
can-manned plane was shot down over
Nicaragua and the lone survivor, Eu
gene Hasenfus, claimed the arms supply
operation was run by the CIA.
But for Reagan to claim no knowl
edge of North’s activities doesn’t fly in
the face of reason. Indeed Reagan
should have been aware, because if he
wasn’t, that in itself is a confession of a
huge black hole in the execution of our
foreign policy.
But things also aren’t so bright in
Washington after it was reported that
North destroyed documents implicating
others in the Contra-funding scheme.
Reagan has ordered White House staff
members to preserve all records and co
operate fully with official inquiries.
le
This really sounds like Waters ^
and raises the question of just ho*
does Reagan know and when dii^
know it. We probabb will haw: |ei :
until the tapes are released—that™™
the piesident doesn’t decide to
them first. ' 5 Hp 1
Despite the attention being t«'j ov ,,
on the diversion <>l funds to the(V ee (
tras, a major concern will behowaD&oin
ocrat-< ontrolled Congress investiwean
the entire spectacle. Bed
Whatever the outcome of the
ding investigation, the vital issueB 5,
mains that the Contras secretly
backed by the United States. Reagan
been less than <. .mdid with ihcAinrfVfs
public. He has talked about thevai
efforts <>l the Contra freedomftglii
but he has s.ud nothing about ouril jL
help to the rebels. In fact, he has del I
vehemently knowledge of any covcit Ia
lions. 1^
In a not-so-secret move, ConirH
bels are being trained by the CUB H(
U.S. Air Force base near Fort WalBcial:
Fla. Whether Reagan and his adi Bdii
n ation are f ound guilty of any tvwB^ 5
doings may prove to be irrelevant if K.°! e
become any more involved "’id 1 P j j,
Contras. When the first wave ofl |L n
soldiers hit the ground secret dealt Joses
will be forgotten in the name offi
dom and democracy — atleastuni
have the Pentagon Papers II to
just why we became involved.
Craig Renfro is a senior journal
major and a columnist for The 1
ion.
A question of competence
here
Immediately af
ter President Rea
gan’s press confer-
e n c e , the
television screen
filled with the
faces of the usual
commentators.
They pronounced
their verdicts: The
president was in
consistent, contra
dictory, not credi
ble. But, to recast
Richard
Cohen
the title of John
Stormer’s controversial 1964 book,
“None Dare Call It Treason,” none
dared called Reagan incompetent. That,
though, is surely what he was.
But incompetent is not a word that
can be publicly uttered in Washington.
For so long the president has been so
personally popular that his incompe
tence — his weak grasp of the issues and
their historical context — has been over
looked. With few exceptions, Reagan
has instead been accorded all the re
spect the people of Oz paid their Wiz
ard. If the polls approved, Washington
fell into line — mumbling only in pri
vate that on more than one occasion the
president didn’t know what he was talk
ing about.
Forget for a moment the manner in
which the president answered questions
and just take a look at his opening
statement. In it, he cited instances in
which his administration had acted
boldly: Grenada, Lebanon, the Phil
ippines and Libya. Lebanon! Wasn’t
that the place where 239 Americans
were killed when a terrorist drove a
bomb-laden truck into the Marine bar
racks? Wasn’t Lebanon a debacle and an
example of using troops when the ad
ministration should have used its head?
The president uttered other minor
whoppers. He referred to pre-revolu
tionary Iran as once a member of the
“family of democratic nations” when it
was, under the shah, a dictatorship with
a ruthless secret police — the infamous
Savak. He tackled a question about the
plight of the homeless by citing the case
of a New York family that was being
sheltered in a hotel at a cost of .$37,000 a
year. Instead of this being an example
of a desperate housing shortage for the
poor, the president saw it as yet another
welfare scam and an opportunity for
private enterprise: “And I wonder why
somebody doesn’t build them a house
for $37,000.” A house for $37,000 in
Manhattan? Who’ll live in it? Minnie
Mouse?
On Iran, it matters that thepreii iict’s
presumes that the United Stale* 1
play a decisive role in the choosinj
the Ayatollah’s successorwh
whole Iranian initiative — p
nothing but a rationalization for
tage swap anyway — is, in the"*
Henry Kissinger, premature. Iti® 1
that the United States assured
Prime Minister Margaret Thatckj
My<
the proposals made to the SoviJ
Reykjavik have been supplanted 1
“priorities,” but that the presideni j d:,!? 18
press conference suggested oil*'
And it matters that the prt
seemed not to know precisely
had offered the Soviets — ortheyl 1
As Sen. Gary Hart pointed out, other
presidents would be skewered for such
preposterous statements. This presi
dent, though, has routinely uttered
them with impunity, as if the tongue is
not connected to the brain. Only in the
inner recesses of the White House is
Reagan being compared to Gore Vidal’s
version of Abraham Lincoln — a presi
dent whose wisdom was appreciated by
few of his contemporaries and who, in
fact, was widely thought to he a fool.
Whether Reagan will turn out to be
another Lincoln remains to be seen. In
the meantime, facts and truth matter —
matter even more than personal popu
larity or the salesman’s talent to sell any
thing. It matters that a president who
talks fiscal restraint has added more to
the federal debt than all past presidents
combined. It matters that the “risks” he
so proudly mentioned were mostly mili
tary and that he associates daring with
shot and shell — not with thoughtful
policy-making.
And, finally, it matters tha
comes to Israeli complicity in ^
than arms deal, the presidentn
denied knowing anything aboui
only to issue a clarification 25 n® 1
later. The clarification, though
mands its own clarification. Was
ing or, even worse, did he forget 1 ’ 1
know in the first place? How cot
president not be aware of the mo
cial ingredient in the Iran scheme 1
In a voice as rumblinglyoni^
the deep organ notes otT
Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarath*
Henry Kissinger suggested a rea 1
zation of the White House staff' 1
amount of personnel shufflingorf
approval will address the pn
principal problem. That probkn 1
his credibility, consistency or t 31
but his competence. A staff shah
probably the best that canbeexf
As Kissinger suggested, Reagan
all the help he can get.
Copyright 1986, Washington Post Writ*