" No defense for Sandy Berger " - Democratic Underground

G_j

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Jul-23-04 09:56 AM
Original message

" No defense for Sandy Berger "

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion//index.php?ntid=7211&ntpid=3

Editorial: No defense for Sandy Berger

An editorial
July 23, 2004

Democrats in Congress, particularly Democrats who oppose the Bush administration's misguided war with Iraq, make a huge mistake when they attempt to defend Sandy Berger, who served as former President Bill Clinton's national security adviser and who now stands accused of stealing and destroying classified materials on terrorism.

Berger has for many years been an atrocious player in American politics. He tried to get former Clinton to launch a war with Iraq in the late 1990s, using "evidence" every bit as flimsy as that employed by the Bush administration in 2003. He has been a Democratic apologist for some of the Bush administration's worst abuses. And, as a senior adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign, he pressured the presumptive Democratic nominee to echo the Bush administration line on maintaining the occupation of Iraq.

In 2003, when Berger was preparing to testify before the national commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he spent roughly 30 hours reviewing classified materials in a secure reading room. Berger was seen placing documents in a leather portfolio and stuffing papers in his jacket and pants.

Berger claims his removal of the documents, which may have contained material harmful to his own reputation, was an "honest mistake." Yet, when National Archives officials demanded that Berger return the documents and paperwork, he produced only some of them and then claimed to have "inadvertently" destroyed the rest. Berger's actions were shocking. And his defenses do not sound credible.
..more..
--------------------------

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19292/

Tip-Toeing on the Platform

By John Nichols, The Nation. Posted July 23, 2004.

The platform that delegates to the Democratic convention are expected to approve is a tepid document largely defined by Kerry's fear of being identified as a liberal.

Backers of Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich's presidential bid joined antiwar activists in a last-ditch attempt to press the platform committee to improve the document in mid-July, at a final "dot the i's, cross the t's" session in Hollywood, Florida.

<snip>
In a measure of the commendable determination of the Kerry campaign to keep Democrats in the fold, Kucinich backers were treated respectfully – especially after they delivered petitions signed by more than 200,000 supporters of an antiwar plank. But in the end they were ceded only a few words to take back to the faithful. Added to a section on getting NATO allies to contribute more military forces to the Iraq endeavor was a line that reads, "The U.S. will be able to reduce its military presence in Iraq, and we intend to do this when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence." It was a small victory that allowed one of the two Kucinich backers on the 186-member committee, Minnesotan John Sherman, to suggest that he could go back to "our folks" – antiwar activists – and argue for Kerry. But even that was too much for Sandy Berger, the Clinton Administration National Security Adviser who was monitoring the platform session for the Kerry campaign. "We didn't give up anything," he claimed.
<snip>