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http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20011208&Category=OPIN
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Toledo Blade
11-20-01
Recalling the 1980 Iran 'rescue' mission
By ROGER CHAPMAN
³... Little did we know that Reagan-Bush strategists were then
negotiating a secret October surprise¹ deal with the Iranians to delay the
release of the hostages until after the presidential election.... I viewed
the Iranians who took over the U.S. Embassy as evildoers. I was unaware of
President Eisenhower's 1953 CIA coup to return Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi to
power. I was also unaware of the Shah's repressive secret police and its
human rights violations. Had I been enlightened, perhaps I would have viewed
the takeover of the embassy during the subsequent Iranian revolution as an
understandable spillover of people's animosity.... Today, as we engage in a
war against world terrorism, I wonder what new problems of our own creation
await us. Our forces will probably snuff out the Taliban and kill Osama bin
Laden, but in the Middle East are many children with our enemy's namesake
and they will have a different take on history. Meantime, I recall how in
1979 the Iranians asked us to turn over the Shah. We said no. Just like the
Taliban, when we asked them to hand over bin Laden.... With my airborne
wings and ranger tab, I would have proudly died fighting, believing that my
country has an innate goodness that somehow transcends any flawed efforts.
But now that I know, I despise the fact that we used undemocratic means to
prop up a government which kept power by arresting and torturing members of
its opposition. Eisenhower, not Khomeni, is to be blamed for what the
American hostages suffered in 1979 and 1980.²
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