One of the big secrets of the Reagan Administration was that they were collaborating with really viciously evil right-wing groups in Central America, “kill and torture civilians” kind of evil (you may remember them being called “freedom fighters”). Big scandal, but not covered much in American news. Think “School of the Americas,” think United-States-sponsored terrorism. It was funding for this whole thing, which had to be done secretly to keep it off the books, that precipitated the Iran-Contra scandal.
Apparently this is now being contemplated as a strategy for Iraq: “many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.”
Link to Newsweek story.
This story suggests just what chilling things were implied by the reverence, piety, and even nostalgia for Reagan at the time of his death last year.
It’s not that people have forgotten the atrocities he and his crew were responsible for. It’s that they look back on them fondly.