At 12:30 AM 10/20/2001 -1000, Reese wrote:

At 01:51 AM 10/20/01 -0700, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

...

In Latin America one Soviet sponsored tyranny was overthrown, and replaced by democracy,

Name?

If this is the Soviet sponsored tyranny that replaced 40 years of "He may be an SOB, but he's OUR SOB" brutal dictatorship, it's Nicaragua. And the US government spent $9/voter (or maybe vote, I don't remember which) on campaign funding for the election where Chamorro beat Ortega - that's far beyond the amounts spent in normal US elections - plus they'd funded military resistance and civil war against the Sandinistas, so the economy was seriously damaged not only by Marxist stupidity and traditional cronyism and corruption, which would have done a number on it all by themselves, but by the need to spend large amounts on the military, the destruction caused by both sides of the conflict, and the diversion of otherwise-productive people into war, and of course by the serious limitations on international trade caused by the US military mining their harbors.