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04/06/2005:

"Old Foe of U.S. Trying for a Comeback in Nicaragua"

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - It has been more than two decades since this tiny nation of five million people and its revolutionary strongman, Daniel Ortega, kept Washington awake at night. In recent months, new fears, but the same old politics, have revived that tossing and turning.

Mr. Ortega, one of United States' fiercest opponents during the cold war and the entrenched leader of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, has opened his fourth campaign for the presidency. Washington is worried once again that its old nemesis might win, this time with consequences for a new global war, on terrorism.

Even though the elections here are more than a year and a half away, and even though Mr. Ortega's chances seem slim, the Bush administration is taking no chances and has begun concerted efforts to stop him.

The clearest shot across the bow came in March when the United States suspended some $2.3 million in military aid to Nicaragua to put pressure on the government, and an army with roots in the Sandinista movement, to destroy its arsenal of Soviet-made SA-7 missiles.

But pressure had been building since January, when a sting operation by the United States and Nicaraguan authorities netted two Nicaraguan men trying to sell an SA-7, a shoulder-fired missile that terrorism experts consider a threat to civilian aircraft.

The sting set off alarms among conservative Republicans, and the State Department sent two high-level delegations here to Managua.

In political magazines and Congressional testimony in Washington, cold war alums - almost as masterly at political resurrection as Mr. Ortega - issued strong, although vaguely substantiated warnings about Al Qaeda recruiting operatives in Latin America; about a new "axis of evil" forming across the Western Hemisphere, from Venezuela through Nicaragua to Cuba; about a "destabilization," or a "backslide away from democratic principles" south of the border; about Daniel Ortega serving as a tool to Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
Full Article: nytimes.com

So wrong. On so many levels. Now anyone advocating democracy south of the border is a 'terrorist.' How do you get credentialed as a terrorism expert? Seems like a good gig.