Learned in '80s: Run VICE from Vice President's office.

[Virginian]

The republicans seem to have learned a lot from the Reagan administration. If you are going to do criminial activity, do it out of the office of the Vice President. That way, the Potus stays in power and can pardon you.

Agnew resigned. His offense was personal, not for the benefit of the president. However, if he had run the watergate plumbers instead of Nixon doing it himself, he may have gotten a pardon. As it was, Nixon was too over his head with Watergate to help his VP.

I wonder what Rockefeller did. He was the last republican invisible VP. We didn't hear much about him.

George HW Bush, former head of the CIA, was able to run Iran/Contra from his VP Office. When congress started asking too many questions, pardons were issued to keep the investigations from proceeding. Reagan claimed not to know anything about it. It worked. We should know a lot more about that operation. Some heads should have rolled. Instead, people who should have been looking out for our national security were undermining it.

Dick Cheney, former secretary of defense, was able to spin intelligence to get us into a war that inriched his friends at Halliburton. He was ultimately responsible for outing a CIA NOC and her cover company Brewster Jennings. Again, people who should have been looking out for our national security were undermining it. Scooter has taken the fall. I expect a pardon for him on a busy news day. The problem facing Scooter et al is the Wilson law suit. I don't think Bush can pardon him from a civil suit. I guess the administration didn't take that possibility into consideration. "No one could have ever anticipated"... that the Wilsons would sue.

[tanyev]

1. And when GHW ran for Pres, he then claimed that he was out of the loop.

American people swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

[blm]

2. And when Clinton had the access to documents Bush1 kept secret, he protected Poppy

instead of allowing the truth to be told on ALL the outstanding matters he inherited upon taking office - outstanding matters in IranContra, BCCI, Iraqgate and CIA drugrunning operations.

The Clintons' Real Trouble with Truth

By Robert Parry
February 24, 2007



Hollywood mogul David Geffen touched a raw nerve with Hillary Clinton when he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that “everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.”

The Clintons’ trouble with truth, however, is not just the petty political lying nor is it their quibbling over what “is is” or what “mistake” means. It’s that they have never shown any real reverence for the truth. Too often, they see it as something to be traded away for a transitory tactical advantage.

If a future historian is ever to understand what happened to the United States in this era – how the world’s greatest power so disastrously lost its way – that scholar should look back to the first Clinton-Bush transition in 1992-93, when Bill Clinton could have grasped a unique historical moment but didn’t.

Clinton was the first U.S. President to take office after the end of the Cold War. He could have ordered a long-needed historical review of what nine U.S. presidents had done, often behind opaque cloaks of government secrecy.

This review also could have assessed what damage those decades of secrecy, propaganda and deception had done to the core values of the American Republic. By revealing the truth, both the good and the bad, Clinton could have helped restore vibrancy to the democratic process by giving the voters the means to again be an informed electorate. ......(more)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/022307.html