Twice a year for the past two years, the House has voted to end U.S. funding for the contras, the 10,000 or so antigovernment guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua. To a majority of the House, supporting the rebels has seemed wrong on principle, or counterproductive as a check on Nicaragua's Sandinista leaders, or both. Just as regularly, the Administration has insisted that the contra war, in which some 5,000 Nicaraguans died last year, provides Washington with essential leverage in its efforts to moderate the Sandinistas' excesses. Last week the policy to and fro resumed as Congress began considering a White House request...
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