Iran/Contra criminals were not held accountable and we are now reaping

[shance]

their destructive acts today. Most are still in power in and behind the scenes.

It should be no secret that Mr. Gates is a close friend of George Bush Sr.

Who was the one who chose Mr. Gates for this position and who really is running running the White House?

That is why impeachment, true accountability is imperative or a message of incivility and immorality spreads like a malignant cancer over any community including our very large community of the USA.

When we don't hold immoral people to their harmful actions, a ripple effect of immorality and disregard for others spreads across the country and erodes every fabric of our communities and our relationships with one another.

It's that important for people to be held accountable. It's the very essence of cause and effect. It is the very core of a healthy, sane society versus a diseased, insane society.

Because when predators/pathological takers aren't held accountable, it is the good, decent, and innocent individuals are often the first to be targetted by the predators who are allowed to roam free from any restraints.

[sweetheart]

1. give feminism a try

We've become folded in patriarchy and centrallized authoritarianism. But the grass roots
that have taken back the congress have a million heads, and the ability to unleash the dogs
without leading them.

Only when they cower behind the heavily fortified gates of their mansions in coward-retirement,
or in a prison cell(s), will we indeed be safe, and it is to be the former; death by 10,000
paper cuts, a million investigations, a million proctoscopes from an invigorated 4th estate.

There's nothing better than a mother to put an errant drunk on the deck.

The predators are tolerated across our society, from the drugs war, to the workplace, to
every foreign policy militarism, it is pervasive and systemic, something we can only
root out by confessing our complicity to.

The complicity in heinous foreign policy is a DIno thing, not so black and white;
the corporate machine rolls over every slave for its lust, piloted by slaves who
want better slavery.

[shance]

4. Wonderful post. I loved what Ted Turner said the other day

in an interview,

When asked about the possibility that the next U.N. secretary general might be a woman, Turner went a step further, advocating that men should be barred from public office for a hundred years in every part of the world.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/09/19/ted-turner-men-should-be_n_29823.html

I think it is also the competitive/materialistic definition of success that is draining the soul out of humans. There is a real lack of investing in relationships versus investing in "things". Of course, material things are easier to invest in, we can control them (for the most part) and they don't die and/or hurt our feelings.

[in_cog_ni_to]

8. What a remarkable thing for him to say!

I AGREE!

I still haven't forgiven him for selling CNN though.;)

[shance]

15. Ain't that the truth*

What WAS he thinking?

[back2basics909]

2. Completely agree..

we send out a bad message and its now come back to bight us.

[shance]

6. Thanks - and I like your handle*

n/t

[William769]

3. Excuse me but people were held accountable!

Including Caspar W. Weinberger (who Bush 1 later pardoned).

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm

[shance]

5. Who was held accountable?

You just proved my point by mentioning Weinburger.

[William769]

13. No I proved my point

He was held accountable. Regan pardoned him. See the difference. The original OP made it sound like there was nothing that occurred, and that would be false.

[shance]

20. How was he held accountable by being pardoned? Is that punishment?

How was he made to experience the consequences of his actions?

Im asking honestly.

[jgraz]

7. We did not continue the hearings after Reagan left

If we had, Bush 41 would have been impeached and Poindexter, Negroponte and Abrams et al would not be allowed within 100 miles of Washington.

This time, we keep our boot on their throats and press down hard.

[in_cog_ni_to]

11. They had enough information on Reagan to hold Impeachment Hearings and the repukes talked them

into not holding them because "it would be bad for the country." LOOK where that got us! They didn't learn their lesson because they were NEVER held accountable for the Iran/Contra fiasco. Reagan broke the law. He should have been IMPEACHED.

[jgraz]

16. Excellent point

The Democrats have a shameful history of spinelessness in the face of these criminal regimes. We need to make sure that this time they crush these fascists like the cockroaches they are.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. By that point, Reagan was beginning to show symptoms of Alzheimer's, so

it would have been pointless to impeach him, but Weinberger and all the other neocons should have done prison time for Iran-Contra. Instead, Bush Sr pardoned the whole sorry lot of them on Christmas Eve, so that the newspapers wouldn't be paying attention, and now they're back to haunt us.

[leftofthedial]

9. bingo

the opposite of justice is fascism

[mmonk]

10. And they were "investigated".

[in_cog_ni_to]

12. Right. Good point.

This time though, they will be held accountable for what they have done. They almost destroyed this country. Had they been reelected, we'd be in BIG TROUBLE right now.

[shance]

14. You are kidding yourself and others if you believe that.

There was no legitimate investigation. It was shut up and shut down.

And NOW we are reaping the benefits as over 700,000 innocent individuals in Iraq are dead along with 3,000 of our soldiers.

That doesnt touch Afghanistan and individuals like Pat Tillman.

That doesnt touch New Orleans and the genocide which intentionally occurred there.

That doesn't touch on the reality that those in Washington seem to ignore the intentional destruction being created by this Administration, either because they are afraid or because they are complicit.

[riderinthestorm]

30. I'm guessing mmonk's use of quotation marks means s/he is being sarcastic

That's how I interpreted them anyway.

Kick and nominated.

[omega minimo]

17. K&R IMPORTANT thread for DU youngsters to understand how we got to this point

Thanks Shance. You're right and there's some good comments here.

They called Ollie North a "hero" for what he did! :puke:

And this argument over "strategery" of whether to chimpeach or not is reminiscent of the clueless complacency of the American public at that time.

[shance]

19. Thanks Omega. I think it's important too.

We can handle the future more honestly and confidently if we objectively learn from our past.

[omega minimo]

21. Dear shance, due to the import, allow me to amend:

"We can handle the" PRESENT "more honestly and confidently if we objectively learn from our past."

When Iran/Contra happened and the public couldn't trouble to raise a rousing FART, it was clear what would come of that............ AND IT DID. Bushco and all the attendant horrors that FINALLY got people's attention.

If we don't learn to pay attention AS these things happen and attend to them, nothing will change, the same (bullshit, avoidable) cycles will continue (apparently with the same cast of characters.....................................................)

[Morgana LaFey]

25. Once again, the media was complicit in that

by "that" I mean the public not rousing to object strenuously enough.

I felt at the time, disheartedly, that the media just didn't have the stomach for more Constitutional chaos after the whole Watergate fiasco (which took years to unwind, you may remember). But that's not a good excuse, is it? They got away with far too much, and here they still are still getting away with their stuff.

[AntiFascist]

18. K&R, this is important!

[nicknameless]

22. .

K&R

[NNN0LHI]

23. Lot of Dems who let them off are still in power too

We are going to have to keep our eyes on them real close.

Don

[AntiFascist]

24. kick again n/t

[magellan]

26. F*cking-A

Time to stop letting criminals walk. With all they've managed to do under Bush**, next time they return it'll be for keeps.

[mmonk]

27. Precisely. They've been investigated before. They've given

testimony or pleaded the fifth before congress before. Though there were impeachable offenses, they walked because the full force of the constitution was not used. Here they are again. Same stench. But this time, the crimes against the constitution and federal laws and statutes are far worse than before. And here we go again, letting them get by with their offenses again without REAL accountability. With much more at stake I might add.

[133724]

28. What happens next time

someone like * gets into office???????

[omega minimo]

29. .

:kick:

[Lindacooks]

31. That's a really good point.

Send that to Dr. Dean and Olbermann, and Speaker Pelosi, for that matter!

[EFerrari]

32. There's a really good segment waiting to be done on these

IranContra bastards that they keep re-introducing to the public as if they were costestants in a beauty contest that we've never seen before. "Now on the runway, Mr. Gates. Mr. Gates plays golf in his spare time and fixes black ops gone wrong as an avocation."

[Lindacooks]

34. Yep. Good analogy.

Every time I hear about another one of poppy's boys coming back to haul junior out of the mess he made I get a sinking feeling.

Aren't these people ever going to go away? Are we never going to be free of them until they die?

[EFerrari]

35. My ex says they should be dead by now. He blames medical science.

:)

[Lindacooks]

41. Snort.

He's right!

[malaise]

33. And unless the investigations re

Iraq start very soon, we'll be saying the same about these goons in 20 years.

[omega minimo]

36. .

....

[shance]

37. kick

n/t

[grasswire]

38. learn this lesson well, this time

End runs on the Constitution have been going on since the 1930s, brought on us by the same people who brought us Iraq.

The elite industrialists.

They perpetrated a military coup attempt against FDR because they despised his financial policies. It nearly was successful. It was only stopped because of a U.S. Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler. Look it up.

And then FDR shut down investigations in order to go along to get along.

Then followed more treachery (in no particular order):

the sabotage of the Paris Peace Talks
McCarthyism
Watergate
Iran Contra
October Surprise
shadow government
Iran hostage intervention to win election
the coup attempt against Bill Clinton
election 2000, the tainting of SCOTUS
Iraq (treason to take us to war)
election 2004 Ohio

See the pattern? They cannot win at the ballot box, so they impose their ideologues who will do their business through abrogation of the Constitution.

They will not stop until they are made to feel pain.

And they always encourage Democrats to "be statesmanlike" and compliant "for the good of the country."

[Karenina]

44. "They will not stop until they are made to feel pain."

ROBERT GATES??? :puke: They will not stop until the are INCARCERATED, STRIPPED OF THEIR STOLEN ASSETS and REMOVED ONCE AND FOR ALL FROM THE LEVERS OF POWER.

[mom cat]

40. You nailed it. We must build the groundswell and lead our leaders

on this one.
We cannot afford to have war criminals with their finger on the nuclear button, or give them a chance to start WW III.

[BlooInBloo]

42. Fearful DUers won't learn. They want to continue to let criminals...

... run rampant over our (hopeful) democracy.

All because they're fearful of losing - when a CHANGE was exactly WHY we won in the first place.

Fucking status quo cowards.

Here's an idea: How about just doing what's right and necessary to preserve this country and its freedoms, and not simply cravenly calculate and triangulate about offending peoples' sensibilities?

[followthemoney]

43. A simple solution. It's called Law and Order. Break the Law, Go to Jail.

All the excuses for crimes are fine. Bring them up at sentencing.

Nixon's gang got country club detention. The security guard who discovered the break in later went to jail for stealing a pair of shoes for his child.

What don't people understand about class privilege and the danger of irresponsible leaders?