SMELLING SALTS FOR THE MINORITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605250007-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 2, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: March 28, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605250007-0
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WASHIyGTOfJ TIf1ES
28 March 1986
Smelling salts,
for the minority
Back to you, Aunt Eunice, whereever you are.
Your nephew Tip has work to do in the House.
This is just the box the Democrats in the House
thought they could avoid by voting against aid for
the Contras in the sure and certain knowledge they
would take another vote after everything simmered
down. Maybe the Senate would rescue them:
They'll get their second vote, and Tip's House
Democrats are in a soup of their own making. That
ungrateful scamp in Managua has turned up the
heat, and by mid-April the pot will likely be sim-
mering merrily. Even the purest in heart, as Tip and
Aunt Eunice might define "pure," will have to swal-
low hard before voting against the president now.
The see-no-evil Democrats and their Republican
allies in the Senate, stripped of the high-minded ar-
guments their counterparts employed in the House,
could only turn for counsel to their fears. The ar-
guments of the Senate minority demonstrates the
weakness now of Mr. Reagan's opposition.
Jim Sasser of Tennessee, who early in the week
gagged twice, fainted once, and allowed as how
maybe what the 6th Fleet did to Muammar Qaddafi
wasn't necessarily all bad, was tormented yesterday
by the nagging terror that the nation might one day
be required to defend its national interests.
!dir. Sasser, who affects the mien of a seIril-finalist
in a Jaycee oratorical contest, has small regard for
the proud fighting traditions of his state. The Rea-
gan policy focuses on military pressure, he says,
and that sends him looking for the smelling salts.
The idea that the United States won't allow the So-
viets to make a forward base of Nicaragua
"threatens to tear Central America apart and draw
the United States deeper and deeper into that mo-
rass and ultimately require troops"
The more the Sandinistas shout, with tanks and
artillery and helicopter gunships, that they don't
want to talk, the more Mr. Sasser pleads - some-
. what in the manner of the spurned suitor who sug-
gests to the girl that if she won't marry him maybe
she'll let him go along on the honeymoon to hold the
winner's coat.
Dale Bumpers of Arkansas finds all this talk of
resistance fatiguing, too. (This is the South of moon-
shine and magnolias, perhaps, but what happened
to the macho?) "Revolutions are like romances," Mr.
Bumpers says. "They very seldom~vork when they
are arranged by outsiders." (Better a little manly
impotence than dashed expectations.)
Sen. Edward Zorinsky of Nebraska is a man of
tougher stuff. He doesn't want to arm the Contras
because they're "inept, incapable, and incorrigible:'
(Somewhat in the way of senators, an unkind man
might be tempted to say).
Only a fortnight ago, these were the sentiments
of the majority. Daniel Ortega changed all that
when he sent his shooting party into Honduras and
couldn't come up with a plausible denial of it, de-
spite all the rooting that was going on here for him.
The early denials were not persuasive; even Tip
O'Neill spluttered his rage at Dr. Ortega as a "bum-
bling Marxist-Leninite." The press pack tried to
he1D. suEeestine as the Senate debate betgan that
the reports of the incursion into Honduras was an
ela orate A hoax.
But last night, just as Jim Sasser and Dale Bump-
ers were pouring out the agonies of unrequited love
and dreams of Latin romance, the Sandinista de-
fense ministry was trying to get a story to fly in
Managua.
Sandinista troops, Managua said, "destroyed im-
portant enemy camps" along the Honduran border.
The government couldn't say where the camps
were, because (a) it had been saying all week that
none of its soldiers were in Honduras, but (b) it has
been saying for months that the hated Contra
camps are in, uh, Honduras.
This sort of moonshine was good for some of the
senators yesterday, just as it was good enough for a
lot of the Democrats in the House two weeks ago. In
another fortnight, though, it will be stale beer for
everybody.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605250007-0