There was a moment in Saturday night's Republican debate that warmed the hearts of all of us Iran-Contra obsessives out here. (We are a small group, but plucky as all hell, and we throw a great party every year on Manucher Ghorbanifar's birthday where we compete in the traditional party game, Swindle The American Suckers.) They were all going on about Iran, and N. Leroy Gingrich, Leader (perhaps) of The Civilizing Forces, decided the discussion was unworthy of his really big geopolitical brain, so he started talking about a project on a level "of the way we fought the Cold War," and then he said he was "proud to have been introduced [this afternoon] by Bud McFarlane, with whom I worked to defeat the Soviet Empire in the 1990's."

Holy hell, we all cried, breaking out the balloons and noisemakers and party hats. Robert (Bud) McFarlane? The guy who was aty the very heart of the illegal gunrunning operation that sold missiles to Iran to subsidize the terrorists we were sponsoring in Central America? The guy who handed over operational control of the criminal conspiracy to noted liar and current Fox News personality Oliver North? The guy who so fudged his testimony to the Tower Commission and to Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh that he wound up getting jugged for four misdemeanors and stayed unpunished because George H.W. Bush found it necessary for his own legal survival to pardon every one except Charlie Manson on his way out the door in 1988? The guy who most famously went to Teheran to negotiate with the mullahs bearing a Bible and a cake in the shape of a key? That Bud McFarlane? Parrrrrrr-tay!

So N. Leroy Gingrich is "proud" of his association with an American government official who facilitated the sale of American weapons to a nation known for sponsoring terrorism. I ask you again: Why does N. Leroy Gingrich hate America?

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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