We cannot provide here a complete overview of the Iran-Contra affair. We shall attempt, rather, to give an account of George Bush's decisive, central role in those events, which occurred during his vice-presidency and spilled over into his presidency. The principal elements of scandal in Iran-Contra may be reduced to the following points:

1) the secret arming of the Khomeini regime in Iran by the U.S. government, during an official U.S.-decreed arms embargo against Iran, while the U.S. publicly denounced the recipients of its secret deliveries as terrorists and kidnappers--a policy initiated under the Jimmy Carter presidency and accelerated by the Reagan-Bush administration;

2) the Reagan-Bush administration's secret arming of its `` Contras '' for war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, while such aid was explicitly prohibited under U.S. law;

3) the use of communist and terrorist enemies--often armed directly by the Anglo-Americans--to justify a police state and covert, oligarchical rule at home;

4) paying for and protecting the gun-running projects with drug- smuggling, embezzlement, theft by diversion from authorized U.S. programs, and the `` silencing '' of both opponents and knowledgeable participants in the schemes; and

5) the continual, routine perjury and deception of the public by government officials pretending to have no knowledge of these activities; and the routine acquiescence in that deception by Congressmen too frightened to oppose it.