No Iran contra affair

overoceans

A few people stay out of jail. Oliver North never becomes a celebrity. Other than that, since it's occurence obviously didn't prevent the GOP from winning the presidency in '88, the party will do at least as well without it. (Though most likely, they'd do about the same.)
 

Expat

Considering how things proceeded in Nicaragua after the Contras failed IOTL, it seems like the entire enterprise was just one of horror and waste. Ending that period earlier (or even better, never funding it to begin with) would be a pure good, and quite possibly with a similar political result to OTL. If you want Ortega out, carrot/stick aid/sanctions seem to have been wholly successful on their own. If anything, funding armed resistance was a drag on that process.

I don't know how you keep Ortega in power, if that's your goal.

In terms of Iran, I defer to someone with more expertise. Did the arms sales make much of a difference in the Iran-Iraq War? Looks like <2000 anti-tank missiles and a few hundred AA missiles? Probably not much of a difference.

Without that engagement with Iran, are regional geopolitics affected at all?
 

hzn5pk

We would not have a good Saturday Night Live skit where Phil Hartman plays Ronald Reagan the great actor, appearing to know nothing of the details of the arms sales and money exchanges while being the master mind behind it all. That was a funny one.
 

Expat

hzn5pk said:
We would not have a good Saturday Night Live skit where Phil Hartman plays Ronald Reagan the great actor, appearing to know nothing of the details of the arms sales and money exchanges while being the master mind behind it all. That was a funny one.
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In a similar vein, I went to a taping of a Jeopardy in the 90s in DC in their “political power players” series (or something). It was Bill Maher, Andrea Mitchell, and Ollie North. The final Jeopardy category- which, after reading it, Alex turned to the audience and emphatically declared was chosen at random- was Military Scandals. Priceless.

I guess that doesn’t happen.
 

overoceans

Expat said:
In a similar vein, I went to a taping of a Jeopardy in the 90s in DC in their “political power players” series (or something). It was Bill Maher, Andrea Mitchell, and Ollie North. The final Jeopardy category- which, after reading it, Alex turned to the audience and emphatically declared was chosen at random- was Military Scandals. Priceless.

I guess that doesn’t happen.
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Wouldn't the producers of Jeopardy at least know on which episode the category was scheduled to appear? Or are all the categories just put into one big pool, and chosen by computerized lottery, with no one knowing when a given category will come up until it appears on the screen?
 

overoceans

And for other butterflies...

Presumably, Fawn Hall's career goes differently with no scandal, so she probably doesn't end up in LA addicted to crack cocaine.
 

Expat

overoceans said:
Wouldn't the producers of Jeopardy at least know on which episode the category was scheduled to appear? Or are all the categories just put into one big pool, and chosen by computerized lottery, with no one knowing when a given category will come up until it appears on the screen?
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The latter is what they told us. Seems like a simple precaution to avoid a 21-like temptation.
 
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