Reddit reviews October Surprise

But there where People behind the "things beyond his control"

October Surprise
Gary Sick, a credible source and an established person. There was also a Nightline episode on this many years ago.

The amount of arms provided to iran under the deal was tiny and amounted to a couple of shipments of anti-tank missiles.

NOTHING compared to the massive amount of financing, arms, and chemical weapons provided to Saddam

So the US was not really playing both sides, that's a lie

But in any case the book you want to read is "October Surpise" by prof. Gary Sick at Columbia U.
https://www.amazon.com/October-Surprise-Gary-Sick/dp/0812920872

October Surprise.

THE ‘OCTOBER SURPRISE’ WAS REAL, LEGENDARY SPYMASTER HINTS IN FINAL INTERVIEW.

> is link to a conspiracy website about how Reagan fixed the election and...

The site is the web site of a prize-winning journalist who has written for some of the largest corporate mass media in the country. The journalist/author in question broke many of these stories and stories about the Iran-Contra scandal.

The claim is not that Reagan "fixed" the election. You're constructing a straw man to obscure.

The October Suprise claim is that Reagan and Bush were traitors and worked to undermine Carter's efforts of freeing the hostages held by Iran (their freeing would have given Carter an "October Surprise" boost in the polls just before the Nov. elections).

What do we know as unequivocal facts about this?

• Years after the election, President Carter stated in a Playboy magazine interview that during the election he had intelligence that Reagan-Bush were in negotiations with the Iranians. Carter said he couldn't do anything about it because he'd be seen as a spoilsport/crybaby, and he would leave it to history to judge.
  
  
• Carter's Nat'l Security Advisor, Gary Sick, has written and said that Reagan-Bush cut a deal with the Iranians.
  
  
• Both Russian (then-USSR) and French intelligence reported meetings between members of the Reagan-Bush campaign and Iranians in Paris.
  
  
• Years after he was out of office, the former President of Iran at that time publicly said that both Carter and Reagan-Bush were trying to cut a deal to free the embassy hostages that Iran held. He bluntly said that he took the deal that was best for Iran -- that offered by Reagan-Bush.
  
  
• Iran held the hostages on a plane on a runway until minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president. Iran then allowed the hostages to go free.
  
  
• After Reagan took office, Israel started shipping American weapons and spare parts to Iran (we know because one flight crashed); such weapons were desperately needed because Saddam Hussein's Iraq had attacked Iran.
  
  
• Years after he was president, Reagan cut other deals trading "arms for hostages" with Iran (in this case, hostages held in Lebanon). (These arms-for-hostage trades are typically swept under the rug with the label of "Iran-Contra".)
  
  There is no debate on those points. Those items are all easily referenced, unequivocal facts.
  
  Given those facts and what the journalist cites in the link provided, it is patently obvious that the Reagan-Bush election team arranged a deal with Iran to keep Americans held hostage by a hostile foreign power -- a traitorous act.
  
  "I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true -- but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." US President Ronald Reagan, 4 March 1987. ("Facts" and "evidence" are such pesky things.)
  
  Edit: Clarity.

http://www.amazon.com/October-Surprise-Gary-Sick/dp/0812920872


The Soviets went through the trouble of arranging for the govt of Afghanistan to "invite" them in, unlike the US in Iraq. In fact the conflict in Afghanistan predated the Soviet invasion, and there was a raging civil war where Islamists opposed the secularizing central government. Guess who was backing the Islamists? Yes, the Saudis and the US.

Oh, and the US encouraged the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the plan being to give them their own Vietnam. US aid to the Afghans had started 6 months before the Soviet invasion

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/27/10-myths-about-afghanistan