Hey Democrats, Truth Matters (dangerous if let Bush gang off the hook

[Vitruvius]

by Robert Parry

<SNIP> In spring 1994, a guest at a White House social event asked Bill Clinton why his administration didn’t pursue unresolved scandals from the Reagan-Bush era, such as the Iraqgate secret support for Saddam Hussein’s government and clandestine arms shipments to Iran. Clinton responded by saying, in effect, that those historical questions had to take a back seat to Clinton’s domestic agenda and his desire for greater bipartisanship with the Republicans. <SNIP> Clinton “didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people,” Sender told me in an interview. “He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”

Clinton’s relatively low regard for the value of truth and accountability is relevant again today because other centrist Democrats are urging their party to give George W. Bush’s administration a similar pass if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress. <SNIP>

Clinton’s generosity to George H.W. Bush and the Republicans, of course, didn’t turn out as he had hoped. Instead of bipartisanship and reciprocity, he was confronted with eight years of unrelenting GOP hostility, attacks on both his programs and his personal reputation. <SNIP>

Clinton’s failure to expose that real history also led indirectly to the restoration of Bush Family control of the White House in 2001. Despite George W. Bush’s inexperience as a national leader, he drew support from many Americans who remembered his father’s presidency fondly. <SNIP> If George H.W. Bush’s role in secret deals with Iraq and Iran had ever been made public, the Bush Family’s reputation would have been damaged to such a degree that George W. Bush’s candidacy would not have been conceivable. <SNIP>

Not only did Clinton inadvertently clear the way for the Bush restoration, but the Right’s political ascendancy wiped away much of the Clinton legacy, including a balanced federal budget and progress on income inequality. A poorly informed American public also was easily misled on what to do about U.S. relations with Iraq and Iran. <SNIP>

MORE at
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0511-29.htm

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. GREAT Read!!!! Parry is one of the best in the blogosphere

This article should be required reading for EVERY Democrat. K & R!

[lyonn]

2. Parry reminds me of Sy Hersch

I try to read Consortium News every day. All his articles are informative and historical.

[blm]

8. Hersch was mostly blackballed after My Lai - Parry was dumped after

IranContra.

The Bush WH harassed Newsweek into forcing Parry out. Well, it turned out Parry was the one telling the truth, didn't it?

[yurbud]

3. This is crucial for the Democrats to get--if they don't draq every dirty

deed these guys did out into the open, they will come back to power that much sooner, and every time they seem more virulent, anti-democratic, and get further.

Frankly, the Democrats who don't want to do this agree with the foreign policy goals of neoliberalism and screwing everyone else on earth, and thus don't want to throw out the neoliberal bath water with the baby bush.

[redqueen]

4. We cannot afford any more neo-liberals.

Just think how different things might be if the GOP voters had stopped the rise of the neo-cons?

[Demeter]

5. NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!

The 100% truth cannot be triangluated with! After we chase down and chastize every single member of the vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, we will go after Iran-Contra; both to clear the record and restore truth to history, and to punish any of the criminals who still live, and believe me, there aren't that many left.

[petgoat]

6. "we will go after Iran-Contra"

Let's go after BCCI, Riggs Bank, the CIA drug smuggling, the October Surprise.
And 9/11 of course.

I was dismayed by Clinton's palling around with the Bushes in the winter after
11/04, because it served to legitimize them. I was puzzled by it too, until
I saw Daniel Hopsicker's writing about the old Mena Arkansas drug flight story.
When I'd heard about this before, I'd always assumed it was just another crazy
right wing conspiracy story. But as Hopsicker tells it, those drug flights were
a CIA operation.

So now I think maybe I understand a bit better how a poor kid from Arkansas could
grow up to be President, and why he has so much in common with the BFEE.

[blm]

7. The shame is that they KNEW Kerry WOULD open the books - and may be

the reason why the DNC didn't *BELIEVE* the voting machines were rigged.

[petgoat]

10. Ah, interesting. I'd never considered the possibility that the

Dem stasis and Clinton's various crimes were connected.

My theory involved Peak Oil, plausible deniability, and the
absolute necessity of seizing the oil fields and preparing for
social unrest associated with major economic dislocations in the
next thirty years.

[blm]

11. Clinton's crime was being passive about Bush's crimes.

This could also have been the result of blackmail. I don't want to believe that Clinton was actually a part of the whole cabal - more like someone STUCK who felt he had no choice.

[pberq]

12. Yes! thanks for posting this info - so many don't realize this

[blm]

17. That's why this article needs to be spread around.

The truth needs airing.

[PATRICK]

9. Both Clintons

are prematurely leading the way out of the wilderness of failure for the RW machine. Overtures to the Bushes, respect for Powell, reaching out to Gingrich, to Murdoch have all gotten some political benefit for the Clintons- and the Clintons alone to the detriment of every single human alive and yet to be born on this planet. I can guess their good intentions and in this case the heinous results will be every bit as dangerous as those of the Cabal.

Maybe someday they will claim they headed off universal nuclear war, anarchy and extinction- if the rest of us succeed in getting rid of the cancer.

[blm]

14. I want to believe the more innocent scenario.

.

[PATRICK]

15. I thought this WAS the more

innocent scenario. Conquering competence and optimism disarming their enemies by compromise, shared efforts and positive engagement. It is the other side who are monsters. It is everyone else in the middle who gets eaten by the monsters when this bebcomes the one and only response. The Clintons deny the reality of inevitable confrontation and think this is some sort of containment than enablement. This is trying to tame the beast. I say good luck but it looks like in the end it must be confrontation anyway.

[blm]

16. What choice is left? Passivity wrought all that's happened since his

fateful decision to continue the secrecy of the BFEE which allowed it to grow stronger than ever since 1993.

[pberq]

13. Thank you for posting this great Parry article