Bush may be gone, but his influence -- and the forces that put him in office -- aren't.

[G_j]

http://www.alternet.org/story/121243/obama_should_worry_about_the_bush_family_tentacles_undermining_his_plans/

Obama Should Worry About the Bush Family Tentacles Undermining His Plans
By Russ Baker, AlterNet. Posted January 22, 2009.

Bush may be gone, but his influence -- and the forces that put him in office -- aren't.


As George W. Bush leaves office and Barack Obama takes over, we are in danger of missing the opportunity for change our new president has promised -- unless we come to grips with what the great historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin called our "hidden history," not just of the past eight years but of the past half-century and more.

<snip>

hrough declassified documents and interviews, I unearthed evidence that George W. Bush's father, the 41st president of the United States, had been working for the intelligence services no less than two decades before he was named CIA director in 1976. Time and again, Bush 41 and his allies have participated in clandestine operations to force presidents to do the bidding of oil and other resource-extraction interests, military contractors and financiers. Whenever a president showed independence or sought reforms that threatened entrenched interests, this group helped to ensure that he was politically attacked and neutralized, or even removed from office, through one means or another.

We are not dealing here with what are commonly dismissed as "conspiracy theories." We are dealing with a reality that is much more subtle, layered and pervasive -- a matrix of power in which crude conspiracies are rarely necessary and in which the execution or subsequent cover-up of anti-democratic acts become practically a norm.

In 1953, 23 years before he became CIA director as a supposed neophyte, George H.W. Bush began preparing to launch an oil-exploration company called Zapata Offshore. His father, investment banker Prescott Bush, had just taken a Senate seat from Connecticut; and his father's close friend Allen Dulles had just taken over the CIA. A staff CIA officer, Thomas J. Devine, purportedly "resigned" to go into the oil business with young George.

Bush then began to travel around the world. His itineraries had little apparent relationship to his limited and perennially unprofitable business enterprises. But they do make sense if the object was intelligence work. When his company at last put a few oil rigs in place, they ended up in highly sensitive spots, such as just off Castro's Cuba before the Bay of Pigs invasion.


...more...

[dflprincess]

1. And that is why Obama has to let Bushco be prosecuted

If FDR had gone after Prescott and his treasonous friends or Clinton had gone after Poppy for Iran-Contra, we might not have had to deal with them for the last 8 years.

Time & again they have been allowed to get away with their crimes for "the good of the country". If the DOJ doesn't go after them this time, it will make the Obama Administration complicit. It's time that someone in charge figured out that holding them accountable is really what is in the best interests of the country.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Absolutely!

[Captain Hilts]

3. A liberal friend of mine who has written a MAJOR bio of FDR said there was nothing...

to this, so-called plot. He said it was nothing more than guys sitting around a table talking. He was looking for it and found nothing substantial.

FDR: Who's this Hilts fellow?
ER: It's really MookieWilson, darling...

[dflprincess]

5. Even if the plot were nothing

there was still the trading with the Nazis which Prescott (and others) only got a slap on the wrist for. He came back from that to become a Senator.

Besides, isn't even talking about harming an elected offical a crime? Or wasn't that the case back then? I recall the story of some poor schmo who was prosecuted for saying he wanted to punch Bush 41 in the nose. And this was some guy whose chances of ever getting withing nose punching distance of the president was pretty much nil.

Then there was sweeping the whole Iran-Contra deal under the rug and God knows what other crimes they've commited. If the elite thugs get by unscathed again, I tremble to think how far they'll go the next time they're in charge.

[G_j]

4. k