Bad advice costs nothing, and it’s worth the price

29 October 2009

The Republicans in the House of Representatives have invited Iran-contra conspirator Oliver North to advise them on foreign policy. Colonel North’s chief foreign-policy accomplishment, as you may recall, involved a clandestine sale of arms to Iranian “moderates” in order to release American hostages being held by Hezbollah, with some of the profits being diverted to support anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. (Haven’t the Republicans been saying that negotiating with evil-doers makes the United States look weak? In this case, the fact that Hezbollah captured new American hostages to replace the ones they released kinda supports their point…) North was convicted of lying to Congress and illegally destroying government documents, but his convictions were overturned because the witnesses may have been influenced by testimony that North gave to Congress under a grant of immunity. (Don’t Republicans usually hate it when a convicted felon gets off scot-free because of some technicality involving a violation of the criminal’s Constitutional rights?)

Treating a guy like this as an authority on foreign policy is like… treating Ronald Reagan as an authority on fiscal responsibility.

via Steve Benen

• Later: Think of it as evolution inaction
• Earlier: Technical difficulties