A
No, I haven't.
B
It's, it's really, I, I haven't been there, I've been to, been to Salvador and, and, uh, in fact, we went back to visit some friends of, of my fathers, that we went in fifty-seven I guess. And interestingly enough the canal is quite small and, and realistically could be sabotaged quite, quite easily. The thing I find interesting, though, is that, uh, is the whole colonial approach and, and, and do we, do we support the Sandinistas or, or do we support, uh, you know, when they thought, uh, they thought that Nicaragua, if you gave them a free election, they would vote for the, Will you, uh, did you ever studied the, the political makeup there, in, in, in Nicaragua.
A
I have a, a little bit, I can't say that I'm, I would be an, an expert on, on the region, but, uh, certainly, uh, I, it, it gets, it ge-, there, your, you've got this, this toss up betw-, or not, not so much a toss up but a, a dilemma when, when you want a country to have its, its, um, own, uh, dominion, or its free rein over its, its own people. and now we're, we're in this dilemma over, uh, United States is, believes in democracy and, and self determination, where a-, but that on the other hand we believe in self preservation and, uh, agree with the, or, not so much agree with but are terribly concerned about, uh, infl-, Soviet influence in, in what's considered to be the United States sphere of the world which is not only, you, we used to see spheres but now we're in a situation where the United States is, looks like we're it now.
B
Well the interesting part about it is that, if, realistically it was economic. I don't know if you read any of the history on where the Panama Canal but there was an option to build it across Nicaragua, uh, and, uh, there were, uh, there's a big, there's a big lake,
A
Uh-huh.
B
and, um, from a technical standpoint it wouldn't have been a lot more difficult to have built it in Nicaragua, but the, the United States, uh, had some, and I've forgotten what the political influence was but there were economic ties then. The issue of, of if, if it's in the economic interest of the United States, uh, do we go in and, and prevail and, and, uh, in other words do we make the world safe for democracy,