Col. Oliver North ♥ the NRA. Which is cool. And he was here again today, this time plugging his latest book. I took the chance to get 15 seconds of facetime with the Colonel, and asked him what he thought of the ATF follies. His reply was in line with what you’d expect: straightforward, un-ambiguous, and direct. He is of the opinion that Attorney General Eric Holder has some ‘splainin’ to do. “We need to know how the ATF was allowing guns to be taken illegally out of this country, started by the Department of Justice and we ought to know if Attorney General Eric Holder personally approved it.” Ouch. Don’t you just love it when someone from inside the Beltway speaks the truth to power? God Bless the U.S.M.C..
Oliver North sold weapons to Iran. Why do we care what he has to say about the ATF letting weapons into Mexico? I could care less if he was a marine, the man is a crook.
+1
Agreed.
IIRC he was a light colonel at the time. I have a hard time believing that the buck stopped at his silver oak leaves.
I have always loved Ollie, he tried to do the right thing and got screwed.
+1
I heart Ollie North.
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan said, “Ollie North — oh, I’ll be happy to tell you about Ollie North. Ollie North has a great deal of trouble separating fact from fantasy. He lied to my husband and lied about my husband, kept things from him he should not have kept from him. And that’s what I think of Ollie North.”
Col. David Hackworth said, “He’s a jackass. He is so preposterous that there is a temptation to laugh at him. He’s smarmy, a flatter, a brownnoser. He’s also a twisted impostor, a drugstore Marine with an apparent compulsion to bullshit just about all the time.”
Maj. General John Singlaub said, “To people all over the world Ollie North was a hero. But I knew better. There was a wide gap between the media image of Ollie North–the honest, loyal Marine–and the sordid reality of his true character and performance.”
Folks might also want to look into North’s charity foundation, the Freedom Alliance.
I was never a big Ollie North fan. I was a big fan of his attorney, who was not a potted plant.
Oh, brother… Like Nancy Reagan was not a litttle flaky. Ollie just told the truth but hey… let’s drag up crap from a different era and forget current issues.
Interesting. I’d never realized Ollie North was such a polarizing figure. I’ve always believed that the Iran/Contra thing was mostly a creation of the media’s bias against Reagan (and residual from their Nixon-hatred.) Not sure I’ve changed my opinion, especially given the bias the media exhibits today. Now that doesn’t mean that I can’t entertain the possibility that North wasn’t everything that he appeared to be. But unfortunately, any grousing from Nancy Reagan or those he worked with is suspect, especially since they each have their own axes to grind.
+1 Voice of reason. Too many people are willing to accept statements from those who might require the “suspension of disbelief” to take them seriously as well.
Had he told Prez Reagan, as Nancy said he should, the media would have worked even harder to destroy him than they already had been – which would have been a shame for someone I think was the best president in my lifetime. I was certainly honored to have him as my CINC when I served.
The irony of Nancy saying “Just say no” while Ronnie says yes to US arms shipments to the Contras, with the planes back-hauling cocaine to further fund the Contras, is off the charts.
Semper Fi! I look at it this way, there were some things I was tasked to do in SpecOps that I did not aqlways agree with, but I always did my duty as told. No military officer could pull off something like that without clearance. I remember being in a certain conveyance close enough to see Boris surfing, once. Don’t think that was not ordered from high up.
Creation of the media? Tell that to the people kidnapped, tortured and murdered as a result of only small elements of this scam. Gunwalker is puppy chow in comparison to Iran/Contra. Financing of the Contras with funds diverted from illegal/secret arms sales to Iran was theft of gov’t property. Subversion of foreign policy is fact. Militarization of the cocaine trade and the fomenting of terrorism (Ronnie called them freedom fighters) in Central America were direct results of Iran/Contra and the blow-back continues to this day. Regan lied, Poindexter lied, and many others, including Ollie lied. Iran/Contra is a precursor and template for Gunwalker. Anyone that fails to recognize the I/C monster will have a hard time tracking Frankenstein’s current creations.