Democrats with dreams of impeachment should consider how Iran-Contra turned out

[Nuggets]

Watergate has emerged as the preferred historical scandal for understanding the Trump administration in its first sixth months. There are plenty of good reasons for this, but they come with an unfortunate side effect: The Watergate fixation feeds the fantasies of liberals and the left.

The Watergate parallel can serve as a salve, holding out the promise that Trump’s administration — with all its vulgarity, disrespect for the rule of law, and questionable foreign entanglements —will be truncated in the same way Nixon’s was. As a check against the idea that all of the scandals must result in President Trump’s downfall, Trump’s opponents should start paying attention to another case of presidential malfeasance with a far more ambiguous resolution: Iran-Contra.

Unfolding five years into Ronald Reagan’s presidency, around the same point in the second term that Watergate began choking the Nixon administration, Iran-Contra had it all: a wild cast of questionable characters, serious violations of law, secretive foreign partnerships, an extensive cover-up, and a web of orders and directives that traced all the way to the White House.

But in the end, not only did Reagan survive the scandal but so did most of the 14 indicted administration officials, thanks to administration stonewalling and a stack of presidential pardons. As it turns out, the executive is remarkably well equipped to defend itself against investigation, even when pitted against a dogged independent prosecutor.

...


https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-big-idea/2017/7/25/16020518/trump-iran-contra-reagan-parallels-impeachment



How did Cheney and Bush fare after war profiteering and ordering torture?

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Great points. Common denominator is AG Wm. Barr, CIA.

Guy’s a magician when it comes to making treason disappear.

Bill Barr: The "Cover-Up General"

"At the center of the criticism is the chief artic­ulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"

by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019
The Village Voice, October 27, 1992

“Attorney General William Barr is the Best Reason to Vote for Clinton”

Excerpt....

SON OF THE CIA

It was 21 years ago, in 1971, that I first encountered William Barr. Both of us were working for the CIA at the time, he as a novice China analyst, I as a member of the agency’s Vietnam task force. Jovial and un­assuming, he took his cues easily from an overly politicized office chief. It was a to­ken of things to come.

Three years before, we had brushed shoulders unknowingly on Columbia Uni­versity’s roiling campus. Both of us were on the other side of the barricades as antiwar demonstrations there blasted our genera­tion into a decade of rage. Barr, a conserva­tive student spokesman, preached tough­ness to the university administration, of which his father, then dean of the engineer­ing faculty, was a leading light. Years later, this same damn-the-torpedoes zeal would commend Barr to his ultimate father figure, George Bush. When Cuban refugees penned up at an Alabama prison rioted and took hostages in the summer of 1991, depu­ty attorney general Barr ordered the place stormed. Soon afterward, Bush tapped him for the attorney general slot itself.

Barr first met Bush in the CIA. In 1976, having shifted to the agency’s legislative office, he helped write the pap sheets that director Bush used to fend off the Pike and Church committees, the first real embodiments of Congressional oversight of the CIA. Intimates say the experience was for­mative for Barr, turning him into an impla­cable enemy of congressional intrusions on executive prerogative.

“The most radical period I had probably was when I was sort of a moderate Republi­can,” he later acknowledged. Sure enough, Barr stayed safe within conservative clutch­es even after leaving the agency in 1977. Armed with a night-school law diploma, he asked for — and got — Bush’s backing for a clerkship appointment to Malcolm Wilkey of the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. Years later, as attorney general, Barr would name Wilkey to investigate the House Banking scandal. Wilkey repayed the favor with a wrenchingly partisan in­quiry. Feeding the press overheated charges of wrongdoing, he scored points off the Democratic Congress just as the adminis­tration itself was being pilloried for its failed economics.

Source...

https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/

Barr also made certain if anyone were to take the fall for Iran-Contra, it wasn’t gonna be Poppy Bush.

[Hoyt]

2. Good point. Would like to see that change this time, but have my doubts. eom

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. Iran-Contra turned out the way it did because of cowardice

And the cowardice continued with "looking forward" and not prosecuting the Bush/Cheney cabal for their war crimes.

If the Dems had impeached and prosecuted the previous GOP criminals, it's less likely we'd find ourselves in the current predicament.

[kacekwl]

5. Amen.

[choie]

4. Bush and Cheney made out

just fine because Obama and the Dems wanted to "look forward, not back." Consequently their war crimes went unpunished which contributed to the belief that the executive branch can do whatever the fuck it wants without repercussions. That's how Bush and Cheney made out. You want the same thing to happen with Trump?

[Nuggets]

7. A smart move.

They didn’t have enough of a majority to waste time on it, and seeing how the media helped Republicans sell their lies it would have cost us even bigger in 2010 when Democratic voters decided to punish Obama because didn’t instantly save the economy, get single payer, and didn’t close Gitmo.

No I don’t want Trump to get away with this, which is why pushing for impeachment is foolish at this time. I trust Pelosi and Schiff .

[Bettie]

6. SO, expect nothing but that orange blob

getting away scot free. Wow. So inspiring.

[Nuggets]

8. No

Stop making this Watergate.

They have upped the game. Dems putting the label “impeachment hearings” on it and won’t change a thing except make the American public reach their saturation point while Republicans fling that “witch hunt” dung.

This isn’t about being inspired. It’s about trying to get real justice.
If people need inspiration and enticement to vote Democratic in 2020 over not initiating impeachment hearings at this juncture, they can’t be helped because they can’t be reasonable.
Frankly, these people need to get over their Ptolemy Syndrome.