Reagan, Iran, Contras and Breaching the Public Trust

Regarding the “Iran” flap: It is hard to say which scenario is worse for America’s credibility and power as a world leader: either we have a President and his cabinet who are not cognizant what the lower echelons are doing and a lieutenant colonel is handling our foreign affairs, or President Reagan well knew, and his advisers, but felt they were above the law.

Our forefathers well knew what they were doing when they set up our government with three balancing limbs, the judicial, the legislative and the executive. No one branch should think or act as if it were above the Constitution.

That is why, regardless of personal feelings for the hostages or the contras , I think this breach of trust by the Reagan regime is greater than Watergate or the Bay of Pigs.

The oft said contention that the ends, controlling the spread of communism, justifies the means, circumventing the will of the Congress and of the American people, cannot be right. The American public is not the ‘ward’ of the President.

With untold homeless Americans on our city streets, one cannot help but wonder how far the secret slush fund of $500 million would go to relieve the situation. They too are hostages--of poverty, hopelessness, and inclement weather.

The American people deserve honest answers. How can we cast aspersions at certain south American governments when our own government has been patently dishonest?

MARCIA MERCER

Ramona