How Bill Clinton Let Bush I Off Hook

[seemslikeadream]

http://consortiumnews.com/2007/110607b.html

Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege is primarily a book showing how the Bush family rose to the pinnacle of power, often by playing political dirty tricks outside the view of the American public.


But a sub-theme of Parry’s book is how Bill Clinton and other accommodating Democrats failed to hold George H.W. Bush accountable for his behind-the-scenes abuses of power and thus opened the door to the Bush restoration in 2000.

This history is important again today as Sen. Hillary Clinton emerges as the Democratic front-runner – and the question of George W. Bush’s accountability will be an issue facing whoever is the next President.






http://www.chris-floyd.com/


Then what? The Democratic nominee looks certain to be Hillary Clinton -- whose husband buried a whole boatload of previous Bush crimes after he took office in 1993, as Robert Parry reports in his book, Secrecy and Privilege. If Clinton I had allowed justice to pursue the various Bush I scandals to the end, we would have been spared the hideous, murderous farce of Bush II's reign. The name of Bush would have been so rightly tainted that L'il Pretzel would never have gotten anywhere near close enough to steal the 2000 election. Is there anyone who believes that Clinton II would pursue Bush II's manifold crimes any more diligently than her husband? The Clintons and Bushes are so close now they'll probably be vacationing together after the election. "Hey, Hill, you gave me hell out there on the campaign trail -- and I wasn't even runnin', ha ha!" "Well, George, you know how the game is played. No hard feelings, ha ha ha!" "Naw, Hill, no sweat. Gimme another one them Coors there; thank god I don't have to pretend about booze anymore, ha ha! Say, where did Bill and Laura get off to....?"

No mainstream Democrat will ever allow full-fledged criminal investigations and prosecutions of Bush II officials for torture and the war crime of military aggression. You know and I know that's not going to happen. We will get, at most, some soaring rhetoric about "healing national wounds" and "coming together again" and "moving on." (With the outside possibility of a few small fry being offered up as sacrifices, to let the Dem president preen as the "restorer of the rule of law" -- and also purge the Republicans, and Bush, of the worst taint: "Hey, it was a few bad apples, and now they're gone. We've got a clean slate!")

[Islander Expat]

1. Whats that saying? Those who do not remember the past....

get to see it happen all over again?

Any wonder why Pappa Bush would have a Clinton 08 sign in the yard?

[wildbilln864]

2. K&R! thank you. n/t

[Just-plain-Kathy]

3. I said it before, I'll say it again. Democracy is over. The Clintons go hand in hand with the Bushes

...Hillary will be crowned President by the same people who handed our White House to Bush and Cheney. ...I predict our spineless Senate and Congress will continue to give Bush his money. If they don't, Bush will take us into Iran. Hillary will be president for her two terms, but at the end of her second term, we will be attacked again. Then our corporate owned media will tell us that we were safer under the Bushes. ....Then hello Jeb. ...They could keep Americans in the dark for another twenty years. No one realizes that a coup was staged and corporate America took over our country.

[blm]

8. Bill said the other day that the country is OVER holding Bush and Cheney accountable

I want to know - SINCE WHEN?

>>>>>>>
Any shot at the current president is an automatic applause line with a Democratic audience. But rather than taking the easy ovation, Clinton gently deflected an audience member's suggestion that President Bush be included in his list of global problems.

"Yeah, Bush and Cheney," he said. "I could sit here all night and make you laugh and cry and stand up and cheer talking about the president and the vice president. But the country is over that. Let's get the show on the road again."

http://www.lvrj.com/news/11044976.html


Moving past serious illegal operations of Bush1 helped BushInc to grow stronger throughout the 90s while left unchecked by any oversight and led us straight to Bush2.

http://consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

Do Democrats want to repeat that exact same mistake and move past Bush and Cheney?

[Just-plain-Kathy]

9. I'm starting to hate the Clinton almost as much as I do Bushco....

Please start a thread with your post. People have to realize that the Clintons moved over to the dark side.

I'll vote for any candidate who promises accoutnablity.

[blm]

10. I did post it yesterday....

This is so serious and beyond that...dangerous. But, the Clinton fanclub thinks accountability and open government is worth tossing away just so they could pretend they were never fooled by their hero.

[BornagainDUer]

15. Clinton: "let's get this show on the road again"? What is this some circus act?

Don't answer that please.

On a positive note it is cool to see people confronting the neoliberals in public.

[blm]

19. neoliberals nothing - they are fascists with smiley face masks whose job it is

to bring along the reluctant Democrats.

[BornagainDUer]

20. At the very least they are fascist enablers.

Don't ask me which is worse. :hi:

[blm]

21. I hear ya, but no longer trusting that it stops at enabling.

.

[scarletwoman]

16. "Do Democrats want to repeat that exact same mistake...?" It's no mistake. It's not a bug, it's a

feature.

There ARE two parties, of course, but they are not the Democrats and Republicans. The only two parties that exist in reality -- and NOT in the fevered "team spirit"-driven imaginations of the D & R partisans -- are The Elites Party and The Rest Of Us Party.

Unfortunately, TROUP -- even though we far outnumber TEP -- has been getting trounced for many decades now. This is obviously due to ineffective organization. Yes, there are many major obstacles -- such as the fact that TEP owns all the major media, and essentially controls all of our governmental institutions, not to mention our societal and cultural assumptions. All due to the fact, of course, that they have tankers-full of money with which to get their way.

What TROUP has is numbers. It also has alot of intelligent, creative people who have dropped out of participating in the political Kubuki that TEP stages for us year after year to keep us fooled into believing that the two parties operating in our political system consist of the phony dualism of D and R.

Unfortunately, we're kind of stuck until enough people realize the truth that our "Two Party System" is a red herring; a sleight of hand designed to prevent us from recognizing that the REAL two parties are TEP and TROUP.

sw

[blm]

17. I've said that we moved beyond GOP v Dems long ago. We are now Fascists v

Open Government.

And so far the Fascists are winning because they bothered to buy control of the newsmedia in the 80s and 90s.

Which leads us to the perennial Super Bowl winners - Bush and Clintons - America's Teams. Dontchaknow?

[seemslikeadream]

4. desire for greater bipartisanship with the Republicans

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

My book, Secrecy & Privilege, opens with a scene in spring 1994 when a guest at a White House social event asks 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 responds to the questions from the guest, documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, 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.

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.

Reporting about a booklet issued by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council, the Washington Post wrote, “these centrist Democrats … warned against calls to launch investigations into past administration decisions if Democrats gain control of the House or Senate in the November elections.”


http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/hamiltoniran-contra.htm

"......former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House select committee investigating the Iran-contra affair, was shown ample evidence against Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but he did not probe their wrongdoing. Why did Hamilton choose not to investigate? In a late 1980s interview aired on PBS 'Frontline,' Hamilton said that he did not think it would have been 'good for the country' to put the public through another impeachment trial. In Lee Hamilton's view, it was better to keep the public in the dark than to bring to light another Watergate, with all the implied ramifications. When Hamilton was chairman of the House committee investigating Iran-contra, he took the word of senior Reagan administration officials when they claimed Bush and Reagan were 'out of the loop.' Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh and White House records later proved that Reagan and Bush had been very much in the loop. If Hamilton had looked into the matter instead of accepting the Reagan administration's word, the congressional investigation would have shown the public the truth. Hamilton later said he should not have believed the Reagan officials. However, today, George W. Bush is considering appointing Hamilton UN ambassador."

[AzDar]

5. The Clintons seem to be the designated clean-up crew for the BFEE.

NO MORE, PLEASE.
:puke:

[mod mom]

6. Marc Rich, Mena Airport Investigation. There's definitely some connection.

:mad:

[leftchick]

12. that CIA Mena chapter reveals a lot about the bush/clinton dynasty

http://www.ncoic.com/clinton.htm

An independent group of researchers in Arkansas are charging that Governor Bill Clinton is covering up an airport used by the CIA and major cocaine smugglers in a remote corner of the Ozark mountains. According to Deborah Robinson of In These Times, the Inter mountain Regional Airport in Mena,Arkansas continues to be the hub of operations for people like assassinated cocaine kingpin Barry Seal as well as government intelligence operations linked to arms and drug smuggling.

In the 1980's, the Mena airport became one of the world's largest aircraft refurbishing centers, providing services to planes from many countries.Researchers claim that the largest consumers of aircraft refurbishing services are drug smugglers and intelligence agencies involved in covert activities.In fact, residents of Mena, Arkansas, have told reporters that former marine Lt. Colonel Oliver North was a frequent visitor during the 1980's. Eugene Hasenfus, a pilot who was shot down in a Contra supply plane over Nicaragua in 1986, was also seen in town renting cargo vehicles.

A federal Grand Jury looking into activities at the Mena airport refused to hand down any indictments after drug running charges were made public.Deborah Robinson says that Clinton had "ignored the situation" until he began his presidential campaign." Clinton then said he would provide money for a state run investigation of the Mena airport. But according to Robinson, the promise of an investigation was never followed up by Clinton's staff. In fact, a local Arkansas state prosecutor blasted Clinton's promise of an investigation, comparing it to "spitting on a forest fire."

Clinton's involvement in the drug and arms running goes even further than a mere cover-up of the deplorable activities that went on, and are still going on, at the airport in Mena. A federal mail fraud case against an Arkansas pilot-trainer who participated in illegal arms exports to Central Americarelied on a key Clinton staffer as a chief witness. The case was dismissedfor lack of evidence when the CIA refused to allow the discussion of top secret information about the arms transfers.

[blm]

7. I've been saying this since I read Bill's book in '04 and now get tarred as a bad Democrat.

Tarred by those who have no clue how dangerous this world became BECAUSE truth was pushed aside in order to protect the secrecy and privilege of the most powerful.

Bush2, 9-11, this Iraq war, Pakistan's dangerous chaos and future war with Iran could NEVER have happened if Poppy Bush's illegal operations had been fully revealed in the 90s and all the outstanding matters that John Kerry specifically stated there were needed documents and further scrutiny were dealt with by a cooperative Oval Office facilitating the access to long blocked documents.

[BornagainDUer]

14. So true. nt

[BornagainDUer]

26. Yea, they both "clean-up" after each other.

[BornagainDUer]

11. When I post stuff about Clinton and Bush being on the Trilateral

Commission ("elite planning for world management")it is frowned on at DU.

[seemslikeadream]

13. ..

:)

[redqueen]

18. We're supposed to sing Kumbaya!

And just vote for Dems.

SCOTUS!

SCOTUS!

[blm]

23. Yeah - as if fascists judges are OK as long as they play the choice game that's been set up

to make fools out of both bases.

[JackRiddler]

22. K but too late for R!

[antigop]

24. Thanks, slad! Good to see this discussed.... n/t

[David Zephyr]

25. James Baker broke the law by going after Bill's mother's passport records.

Bill let him off the hook, too.