This is showdown time for the Central America Free Trade Agreement. Thanks largely to strong opposition from labor, environmentalists, human rights, and other activist groups, the Bush administration still lacks enough support to ensure victory in a House vote expected between July 27 and 29.

Unable to sell CAFTA on its merits, desperate Republican supporters have had to resort to the fear factor. Their reasoning appears to be that if you can get Americans jittery enough, they will support pretty much any darn thing.

But since Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere in the hills of Tora Bora instead of the highlands of Guatemala, Republican free traders have had to strain to conjure up an effective monster. The best they could do was Daniel Ortega. Remember him? He's the former Nicaraguan guerrilla fighter-turned-politician who was voted out of office 15 years ago.

Ortega continues to have aspirations of regaining the Presidency, but lost electoral bids to do so in 1996 and 2001. And of course the specter of a Soviet Union-Sandinista alliance is long gone.

It is hard to imagine this former leader of the hemisphere's second-poorest country posing a dire threat to US national security. But listening to Congressional debate over CAFTA, you would almost think that Ortega and his fellow Sandinistas were preparing to march on the White House-arm in arm of course with Fidel Castro and Venezuela's elected President Hugo Chavez.

During Senate debate on June 30, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe warned his colleagues: "These Communists, these enemies of the United States, Chavez, Ortega, and Castro, are all in opposition to CAFTA. If you want to be on their side, you would vote against CAFTA."

Senator Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, chimed in by declaring: "I do not want to go back to the Nicaraguan situation and Danny Ortega. That is not in the best interests of these countries in the region, and it certainly is not in the best interests of our national security."

Republican John Cornyn of Texas repeated the mantra, stating that "There are literally people waiting to take advantage of America, if we turned our back on these countries [by blocking CAFTA], and to claim that instead we should align our interests with people like Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, and others."

In all, Ortega's name came up 12 times during the Senate's one day of debate, before that body approved the deal by a narrow margin. In the House, where the real battle will be, debate hasn't officially begun yet. But that didn't stop California Congressman David Dreier from playing his Ortega card in a letter to the Washington Post. "Those of us who well remember Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega do not take lightly his fierce campaign to defeat this agreement," Dreier wrote. "We can abandon our friends to poverty, dictatorship and the Ortega vision for the future. Or we can help them to grow, prosper and improve their standard of living."

But Rep. Mike Kirk of Illinois takes the fear-mongering prize. On July 20, he informed House colleagues that Chavez, whom he dubbed "Venezuela's Mussolini," was purchasing weapons "to fight a new war. His war may be in Central America. His agents are already funneling oil money to groups hostile to the United States and to free trade. We in the Congress have a choice to make. We can either send exports to Central America or troops. Next week let us enact a free trade agreement with Central America to lock in democratic growth and stability, and let us make sure that President Hugo Chavez's Venezuelan agents find no fertile ground in America's back yard."

Thankfully, Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. jumped in to steer the debate back to the realm of reality. "Mr. Speaker, I just heard a quote on the floor of the House of Representatives to send products to Central America or send troops," the New Jersey Democrat said. "I have never heard anything more absurd or simplistic in my nine years here in the House of Representatives. The people of these six countries oppose CAFTA. They say it is unfair. And it really is a corporate-inspired trade deal that hurts working people both in the United States and Central America."

Let's hope other leaders are ready to strike down any further attempts to take advantage of Americans' real fears in order to pass an unpopular free trade agreement. We deserve a debate on the issues that are actually relevant to CAFTA: labor rights, livelihoods for small farmers, access to medicine, and the environment. For all I know, Daniel Ortega may be enjoying his return to the Washington limelight. But it is a big insult to the rest of us.

Sarah Anderson is the co-author of Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2005) and Global Economy Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.