Killer, Coward, Conman

More Proof Only the Good Die Young

by Greg Palast

June 08, 2004

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.

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Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. http://www.GregPalast.com

It's so pathetic.

Bitter twisted little people.

Castro is proof "only the good die young."

Compared to liberals Reagan is a god among insects.

What is it about you losers that compels you to blame the savage barbarism of the third world on AMerica in general and, at the moment, on Reagan in particular.

Do you honestly believe that Central America would be just one big peaceful pinata party if it weren't for Reagan's attempts to aid those against Soviet backed Communism.

We're no more to blame for the contra's doings than Cuba or Russia are to blame for the atrocoties of the Sandinistas.

Of course we all take sides and have interests but the time honored methods used by both sides of these gutter civil wars are there own choices.

Slaughter and rape is the national sport in most of these unevolved cesspools. And save all your whining about racism. This is simply the truth.

So please stop the inane ramblings about some Reagan led massacre. It's all utterly groundless and ultimately silly.

but Bush gives better head.

Like I need another history lesson from some wigged out reactionary with a grudge. Stop the murmuring already and let's get on with the business at hand. I think every American has been exhausted this week with all the Reagan overkill in the media. We've heard it from the leftwing and we've heard it from the rightwing, yet the ultimate irony is who is right and who is wrong? In the end all we have is our convictions.

I just bid on one of the Gipper's adult diapers on Ebay.

Best of all, it still has his crusty shit in it!

Takes one to know one Barney. You stupid bitter conservative cryptofascists spend years on IMC doing what leftists are doing to Reagan for two weeks.

Take a prozac.

I just come here for the entertainment and I sort of hope in my way that I can enlighten some of you (those that are not completely insane).

blarney: "I just come here for the entertainment"

...and what a great act you have...

...do you have an agent yet?

What a stupid question. Was that what passes for humor among you lefties.

...you're the straightman, schmuck...you ain't supposed to get it...THAT'S THE JOKE!

....geez...republicans are a laugh a minute, huh?

Sorry if I am pitching them over your pin head...let me know if you want me to stick to fart and poo-poo jokes so you can keep up.

Knock yourself out.

...knock myself out?

...takes all the effort it would take to push a drunk man off a log...