Saddam Hussein Confused about Iran-Contra?

According to reporting from the New York Times, Saddam Hussein was a tad bit confused about the whole Reagan Iran-Contra affair.

On Nov. 15, 1986, Saddam Hussein gathered his most senior aides for an important strategy session. Two days earlier, President Ronald Reagan had acknowledged in a televised address that his administration had sent weapons and spare parts to Iran.

“It can only be a conspiracy against Iraq,” said Mr. Hussein, who inferred darkly that the United States was trying to prolong the Iran-Iraq war, already in its sixth year, and increase Iraq’s enormous casualties.

In truth, the Reagan administration had arranged the arms shipment for a variety of reasons that had little to do with Iraq: to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon, to open a private channel to the new leadership in Tehran and to generate secret profits that could be sent to Nicaraguan rebels.

What's so hard to understand? At the same time that the US was supporting Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War, the Reagan administration had Israel sell weapons to Iran. The US would then take the payment that Israel received from Iran and in return resupply the Israelis with more up to date military hardware

The Iranians would convince Hezbollah to release Americans hostages in Lebanon. Later Oliver North and the US sold weapons directly to the Iranians and redirected a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales to fund the Contras based in Honduras and Costa Rica. And the Contras, of course, were fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. 

Oh, and by the way, the Iranian were also providing the Sandinistas with some support at the time. So you had the US supplying the Iraqis and Iranians and the Iranians funding the Contras (indirectly) and Sandnistas (directly).

Who isn't confused? Reagan allegedly didn't even know everything that he and his administration were up to.

Santa Luisa School in San Salvador

Bill Howard at the Catholic News Agency has a nice write up about the Santa Luisa School in San Salvador. I traveled with Bill to the school in 2008 on The University of Scranton's Bridges to El Salvador program..

For the more than 500 boys and girls — mostly from poor or destitute families — who get a K-9 education at Santa Luisa, the school is an oasis from a city suffocating from drugs, gangs and violence. For many students, Santa Luisa represents their best chance to break out of the cycle of poverty that surrounds them daily.

Santa Luisa is beginning its 76th year and would not have reached its milestone 75th year without the aid of a group of alumni from the University of Scranton (Pa.). Led by Jesuit Father Brendan Lally, who now serves as a spiritual director at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia, the non-profit Salvadoran Children of the Poor Education Foundation (SCOPE) has helped Santa Luisa meet its annual budget and supply basic needs for the past decade.

SCOPE is the product of two immersion programs Fr. Lally steered over two decades at the University of Scranton. The first, International Service Program, began in 1987 and takes students and alumni to two homes for street children in Mexico City for six weeks of the summer. Its success spawned a second program, Bridges to El Salvador, formed after Father Lally’s heart was moved by the Catholic witness of the people there.

You can read more about the S.C.O.P.E. Foundation and ways to help the Santa Luisa School here.