LETTERS Au contraire
Sir: With reference to Mr Harold Pinter's letter (5 March), might I remind him that `real facts' is a redundancy and point out to him that his letter is fuller of clichés than it is of 'real facts'?
How can one refer to 'a long, systematic and brutal war of aggression' waged by the United States against Nicaragua, when the Sandinistas received twice as much aid from the United States as they did from the Soviet Union between 1979 and 1982 (after the United States helped the Sandinistas topple Somoza by cutting off all aid to him and preventing other countries from aiding him); when the United States shifted to supporting the Contras only after the Sandinistas made plain their alliance with the communist block, their support for insurgent movements throughout Central America, and their implacable hostility to the United States and to all democratic institutions in their own country (all of the original Sandinistas who harboured demo- cratic sympathies are now Contras); and, finally, when, despite,the massive amounts of Soviet aid that have since poured into Nicaragua — Soviet military aid to Cuba and Nicaragua was three times as great as US military aid to all of Central America in 1983-85 — the United States Congress has surely been less than systematic in helping the Contras. Congress can't even agree on a consistent course of humanitarian aid to succour the Contras after they get pounded by Soviet hardware. The Contras are a brave force — more numerous than the Sandinistas were when they seized power — who have an unreli- able ally in the United States and who are facing a much more militarily powerful and repressive adversary than Somoza, which is backed to the hilt by Cuba and the Soviet Union. If Mr Pinter would be willing to trust his life to the International Court of Justice at the Hague, however, we can at least say that he is brave too.
H. W. Crocker III
1130 17th Street, NW Washington, DC
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