When the Gipper was a gasser

Having followed history now for over 60 years, I never cease to be amazed how folks not only erase unpleasant history but actually turn it upside down to advance their political agenda. Consider US House representative Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL-27th). She told Fox News last week regarding the war party rush to war against Syria, "We have said as a responsible nation that the use of chemical weapons is prohibited.  It is against the norms of international standards and to let something like this go unanswered, I think will weaken our resolve. I know that President Reagan would have never let this happen.”
 
Really, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen? It turns out Reagan not only let that dastardly conduct happen, he sold the stuff to Saddam Hussein and enabled him to use it on Iranian soldiers when we were backing Iraq against Iran in their grisly 1980's war. An un-refuted 2002 Washington Post report found  “the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.” Newly released CIA documents reveal that in 1988, the Reagan administration used satellite imagery to locate advancing Iranian troops for Iraqi forces knowing that Saddam's military was likely to attack with chemical weapons, some of which we had supplied. They did attack with them killing thousands. Reagan's rationale was that it was better to let Iraq continue chemical attacks rather than allow our feared enemy Iran win the Iraq-Iran war.

 

There have been 9 Republican presidents in the last hundred years: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. For extremist Republican partisans all but Ronald Wilson Reagan have been erased from the Republican story. Only Reagan remains with a false and twisted history concocted about a grandfatherly patriot who never raised taxes and never besmirched the American Story. Come election time Reagan is trotted out like the Old Ranger he portrayed on Death Valley Days to appeal to the aging and declining block of affluent white voters who constitute the Republican base and relate to the Reagan imagery. Republican strategists like to say, "Let's win one for the Gipper". If Saddam Hussein could come back to comment, he'd say, "I gassed thousands for the Gipper".