As Hillary Runs for the White House, Consider Bill's Refusal to Explore Bush I Scandals

If Senator Clinton wants to use her husband's popularity to aid her campaign, we should know the good, bad, and ugly surrounding them both.


As Hillary Runs for the White House, Consider Bill's Refusal to Explore Bush I Scandals

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted October 5, 2007.

Would President Hillary Clinton sweep Bush White House scandals under the rug like her husband did? A look back at Bill's refusal to go into geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

Editor's Note: As Hillary Clinton has emerged as a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, this excerpt from Consortium News Editor Robert Parry's book, "Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq," is required reading on the issue of how an elected Hillary Clinton may treat the eight years of crime and scandal from the second Bush presidency.


snip//

Questions for Clinton

Stuart Sender, who had worked as a journalist on the Reagan-Bush-era Iran-Contra and Iraqgate scandals, had a different reaction. He wondered why Clinton had never pursued those investigations of Republican wrongdoing when he became President in January 1993.

After all, Sender thought, those were real scandals, involving secret dealings with unsavory regimes. Top Republicans allegedly had helped arm Iraq's Saddam Hussein as well as the radical Islamic mullahs of Iran, violations both of law and constitutional principles.

Those actions had then been surrounded by stout defenses by Republicans and their media allies. The protection had taken on the look of systematic cover-ups, sometimes even obstruction of justice, to spare the top echelons of the Reagan-Bush administrations from accountability. These weren't like the trivial allegations besetting Clinton's Presidency.

Indeed, as Clinton was heading into office at the start of 1993, four investigations were underway that implicated senior Republicans in potential criminal wrongdoing.

more...

http://alternet.org/story/64345/

I'd like to hear what Obama and Edwards have to say on the subject.

By playing too nice. Not just Bush I, but putting into office a CIA & FBI Director who helped bring them down. Then there's Dick Morris who became a canary for a living; Stenophalous who wrote a book trashing them; and Carville who is sleeping with the enemy. These are their inner circle.

And would anyone allow Ken Starr to ever be a special prosecutor again? Why didn't they protest that on the grounds that he was a maniac partisan? Why couldn't they insist on a Patrick Fitzgerald?

If Hillary is playing this face licking game of being nice to everyone in a phony way in order to get what she wants, why should she be surprised when people turn around and do the same to her? Can't she tell the difference between a real civil servant, and a phony like her? Political phonys will stab her in the back just for the chance to make their bones with the Republicans - just like all the people that Bill Clinton appointed.

You can't depend on anybody when the chips are down. Bush knew this, which is why he, atleast, was very selective about surrounding himself with loyalists who, either believed in him; or atleast, when bought, could stayed bought.

the next President of the US of A to be schooled in the art of manipulation, calculation, and triangulation.

Those qualities are in themselves, not bad, and perhaps at times useful.....but not when they are the front and foremost overriding quality in each and every consideration of governance.

The means can not always justify the end, and getting elected is not the last step, but the first.

Bill Clinton can not be allowed to rehabilitate his legacy, though Hillary becoming President.

Bill and Hillary can not return to the WH, by walking on the backs of those who need governement the most...the under insured, the underpaid, the undereducated and the out of work.

To say it another way......they had their chance.....and blew it.

And this OP crystallizes the point perfectly.......because that kind of thinking is still present in both of them.

The reaches and twists by some on the 'left' get more remarkable by the day.

avoids decisions in a similiar fashion to Bill.

For example:

She wrote her biography and at a time when she knew she was going to run for president.

She wrote her biography in such a way, that allowed critics (Carl Berstein) to call her out for not being truthful.

Why would she write in such a way, that would even allow a tiny bit of wriggle room for critics.

It's becasue she calculates, she can not help it, it is her nature.


The process affects the outcome.....

Why is she even in the headline? What does this have to do with her book, or being calculating?

If there's a grievenace about the Big Dog, make it about him. Don't say 'hey Bill did this, so watch out for Hillary'.

nothing wrong with looking into this, as they're birds of a feather... Who will she be getting advice from, and what kind of advice?

If "progressives" want Al Gore to run for president, we should know the good, bad, and ugly surrounding him.


If Al Gore Runs for the White House, Consider Bill's Refusal to Explore Bush I Scandals

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted October 5, 2007.

Would President Hillary Clinton sweep Bush White House scandals under the rug like her husband did? A look back at Bill's refusal to go into geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

Editor's Note: As Hillary Clinton has emerged as a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, this excerpt from Consortium News Editor Robert Parry's book, "Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq," is required reading on the issue of how an elected Hillary Clinton may treat the eight years of crime and scandal from the second Bush presidency.


snip//

Questions for Clinton

Stuart Sender, who had worked as a journalist on the Reagan-Bush-era Iran-Contra and Iraqgate scandals, had a different reaction. He wondered why Clinton had never pursued those investigations of Republican wrongdoing when he became President in January 1993.

After all, Sender thought, those were real scandals, involving secret dealings with unsavory regimes. Top Republicans allegedly had helped arm Iraq's Saddam Hussein as well as the radical Islamic mullahs of Iran, violations both of law and constitutional principles.

Those actions had then been surrounded by stout defenses by Republicans and their media allies. The protection had taken on the look of systematic cover-ups, sometimes even obstruction of justice, to spare the top echelons of the Reagan-Bush administrations from accountability. These weren't like the trivial allegations besetting Clinton's Presidency.

Indeed, as Clinton was heading into office at the start of 1993, four investigations were underway that implicated senior Republicans in potential criminal wrongdoing.

more...

http://alternet.org/story/64345/

You have to reply to your own posts now?

Except for those who have already dozed off.

But, no, my threads are drawing over 100 replies these days. Would you like examples?

as the Republicans did with less obviously questionable Clinton pardons. The point made here is that Bush pardoned people who could have been used to get information that he had committed crimes. I think this was unprecedented.

is it Bill, or Hillary running?

no candidate is going to win on a platform of 'getting back' at the last administration. Bill Clinton won twice, and is still very admired, because of his forward-looking optimism.

Bush II was allowed to come to power because of our failure to analyze Bush I. Administration cronies have not only absorbed most of the Clinton administration's surplus, they have pushed the US further into extreme debt and sacrificed many of our liberties, if not the Constitution itself, and our international reputation has ended up in the toilet. That's quite a sacrifice to make for being optimistic.

is that if Hillary is elected, she will, "for the good of the country," try to move forward without fully investigating and prosecuting the crimes that have been committed since 2000. There must be some accountability and Bush and Cheney's people must pay.

look for a Jeb presidency in 2016.

They and their supporters often claim they really stand up and fight back in regard to the attacks from the reich-wingers.

Huh?

It has seemed since day one a big priority for them (and the DLC) is to not upset the wingers, especially not Bush Inc.

Ah well, at least we have our increased chocolate rations. ;-)

Julie

...this is one flaw, crack in the wal, whatever you wish to call it, that absolutely will NOT be brought out in the mudslinging later on. You can take that to the bank! heh

Lawrence Walsh then ran what at the time was the longest independent counsel investigation. I think it was five years. Most of the people were either convicted or had their convictions overturned on appeal. Those who remained to be prosecuted were pardoned by Bush. There was no hope left for turning an insider.

The authors here aren't specific about exactly what there was that Clinton didn't expose. Merely prolonging the investigation would have looked like an abuse of power to punish political opponents if nothing new and major was unearthed. I doubt anything good would have come from investigating further.

One other scandal pointed out here was the October Surprise allegation. That was 12 years old by the time Clinton took the helm. At least one part of the allegation was disproved. On a day when Senior Bush was supposed to be conspiring with Iranians in Europe he was actually photographed playing golf here in the states.

Another scandal that the authors say Clinton didn't excavate was the Bush cabal looking at Clinton's passport file. I can't remember if it was the passport file or the search for files on Bill Clinton's mother, but an independent counsel investigation was launched. The independent counsel was Frank DiGenova, a right wing operative who ended up writing a report that said the Bush cabal was guilty but he wasn't going to prosecute. I don't know how DiGenova got appointed but I remember at the time the media obliged the Republican rule that if a Republican was in trouble there had to be a Republican independent counsel to make sure no political witch hunts took place. If a Democrat was in trouble there had to be a Republican independent counsel so there was no appearance of a cover up.

In the environment the GOP created, anything Clinton would have done would have received massive negative press, and probably produced little that would have benefited anybody.

He thought he could put the Reeps in his shoes and so understand them.

He knows better now. And you may be assured, he has told his wife.

in broad daylight or behind the scenes since, ermm, the sixties at least.

I think outing that ugly truth is one of the most important things, but also one of the hardest as it requires a lot of historical insight.

repurcussions to Busholini or any of the Fascist Regime. She will say that America must move forward.
Bill Clinton is good friends with the Bush Crime Family. No dissing of Hillary will come directly from them.

and Bill will second the motion.

It government by blackmail. The people who financed and carried off BCCI and Iran-Contra compromised Bush and Clinton. So long as either is in power, there will never be a meaningful official investigation of how the U.S. Government was colonized.

Inventing a specious "sin of omission" by Bill Clinton...then trying to pin it on Hillary. The mind reels. What will the anti-Hillary people say next?

Every war in the twentieth century but one started on a Democrat's watch. No country on the planet has sold more arms than this one. It is folly to somehow think the Democratic party and its leadership are not entangled in all of this.