Former Reagan national security adviser McFarlane dies at age 84...

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : In May 1986, McFarlane and Oliver North flew on a mission to Tehran to meet who they thought would be moderates.
49% : McFarlane led arms sales to who he thought were moderates in Tehran on hopes they could free seven U.S. hostages held by Iran-linked Hezbollah in Lebanon.
48% : In Nicaragua, the socialist Sandinista government, McFarlane believed, formed a "beachhead on our own continent ... working from there to spread communism virtually all across our backyard.
42% : The failed attempts to free them circumvented a U.S. arms embargo to Iran and took place only a few years after Iranian militants had held 52 hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran for more than a year.
32% : An Israeli contact broached the idea of selling U.S. arms through Israel to moderates in Iran, locked in war with Iraq.
15% : Robert McFarlane, a White House adviser who tapped Saudi royals to fund a covert war in Nicaragua and flew on a secret mission to sell arms to Iran in the scandal that shook Ronald Reagan's presidency, has died, the Washington Post reported.

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