Why Gonzogate might take Bush down the way Watergate did Nixon (not what you think)

At first I thought it was really odd that this Gonzales business was what Congress and the press latched onto to unravel Bush. But if you think about the parallels with Nixon, it makes sense. Was Watergate the worst thing Nixon did in office? Probably not by a country mile. The illegal bombing of Cambodia, overthrowing the elected president of Chile, and Operation Condor in general did far more damage and led to the deaths of tens of thousands.

But if you started to pull on those threads, they'd lead back to some big corporate players, like ITT, United Fruit, and whoever the hell it was that thought a decade of war in Southeast Asia. Those people would not want there business discussed when everyone was watching. Instead, they pulled on a thread that was impeachable, but only led to a handful of political operatives, a dead end.

In the same way, if you pulled on the bigger threads with Bush, Enron, New Orleans, Iraq, 9/11, not only does it lead to willful indifference to human suffering and even the gleeful exploitation of it for profit, but it leads to the administration doing it as the agents of the largest corporations in the world. Once you start to go down that road in public hearings, people might forget about abortion, gays, Anna Nicole Smith and Harry Potter long enough to demand a break up of some of these corporations into a thousand pieces as was done a hundred years ago with Standard Oil.

Better to take care of the problem exactly the way Bush did the first couple of years: make someone in the administration the scapegoat, get all public hatred and scorn focused on him, them remove him from sight so people think the problem is solved. This peek-a-boo game has gone through one or two cycles with Karl Rove, and it worked once or twice with Rummy before they finally really gave him the boot.

Now the same thing will be done to the whole administration. They be will taken down by a scandal that has roots no deeper than Bush's equivalent on Tattoo on Fantasy Island, Alberto Gonzales.

The media will tsk and cluck about those crazy, out of control ideologue neocons, and foreign policy establishment types like Zbigniew Brzezinski will write op-ed about how wrong-headed the very foundations of Bush's policies are even though he himself built the molds Bush poured the concrete in.

The Lyndie Englands of this era will go to prison, Bush and Cheney may go into involuntary early retirement, but those profited and stood to profit by Bush's actions, who told their papers and networks to salute so their oil and defense stocks would be shoot through the roof, they will escape unscathed.

If we were a people of laws, with equal laws for all, the soldiers tried for atrocities and torture would not serve one day more in prison than the heartless bastards in their mahogony lined country clubs. In fact, before a single soldier is convicted of any wrong-doing, the masters of war should be tried as mass murderers of hundreds of thousands. The foot soldiers should at worst get Pinochets fate of wondering if they will ever see prison even in last days of their life, and the masters of war should wonder if they will ever get some privacy while they are taking a shit on a steel toilet bolted to the wall of their cell.

:thumbsup:

Well reasoned and well written. Thanks.

and again, just like it has since watergate...maybe even further than that. Excellent post. K&R

The carpet-bombing of Cambodia, a neutral state, was a hell of a lot worse the break-in.

But Kissinger got away with it, and Nixon took the fall.

This is prolly more of the same.

I hope not. I still have hope of seeing some Masters of War behind bars.

Not a reasonable hope . . . but it is there, nonetheless.

K&R

$400K and he gets a senate seat.

The firing of the U.S. Attorneys also encompasses some Republican legislators involving themselves with ongoing investigations. I suspect that all concerned in Congress would let that issue fade away in favor of making the neocons the scapegoat.

A factor in support of your premise is the fact that this scandal is relatively new and not subject to the right-wing pundits whining that this is old news and already settled.

K&R

Geiger counters going off all over the country.

Just make sure the money doesn't get hurt.

Your posting makes a great deal of sense.

He attended a party at Clint Murchison's (Big Oil) place in Texas the night before JFK was hit in Dealey Plaza. Also present, amongst others, were the cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover and none other than Lyndon Baines Johnson!

In the infamous Nixon Whitehouse Watergate tapes, Nixon's references to the Bay of Pigs and 'the Cuban thing' were references to the assassination.

I have come to the view that JFK's murder was a bipartisan venture. To a large extent the two party system - i.e. the battle between Elephants and Donkeys - is nothing but a dog and pony show!

The 911 Commission Report was in essence the 21st century equivalent of the Warren Commission. Funnily enough, the 'bipartisan' 911 report assumed a much greater level of public 'dumbing down' than did Justice Earl Warren and his helpers.

P.S. Arlen Specter was the one mainly responsible for the 'magic bullet theory'.

Don't lump progressives in with you 'bipartisan' venture theory. :mad:

Bill Clinton has actually referred to the existence of a 'secret government'. In general, most intelligence services worldwide do their bidding.

A Farewell To Justice
www.joanmellen.net

And even the doubters, Posner et al, are scrambling to explain:

Celebrated authors demand that the CIA come clean on JFK assassination
Gerald Posner, Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo back lawsuit to open secret files on CIA mystery man tied to Lee Harvey Oswald

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/12/17/joannides/index.html

while we're at it :)

If we are going to throw away the key and let other folks shit in toilets bolted to the wall, it should include people like Wolfie, Tim RUSSET POTATO, O'Reilly, the entire staff of FOX, the NEW YORK TIMES, etc..

They SHILLED nonstop, complete with Graphics designed to twist minds into the mold..

I'd like Hearings by Waxman, where they trace the Media outlets BACK to their corporate masters, and show how GE OWNS TV stations, etc..

Turn over some of THOSE rocks.

I agree, the shorter the thread, the better for the Guys behind the curtain, of course CHENEY is one of the guys behind the curtain, and we also want ALL THAT MONEY BACK - we'll take it from Halliburton, the MEDIA, and whoever else STOLE it from the Treasury in this Farce of a 'war'.

Smart bombs puffing buildings like a video game, flat-topped generals looking hunky in their desert fatiques, dehumanizing the Arab and blasting their towns. Makes it all so easy to take life and limb.

Everything is a TRIAL BALLOON with these guys, ALL OF IT.

They use the poor, who cannot defend themselves, as well as the defenseless in other nations, to TEST MARKET the latest OUTRAGE, and once they've created the precedent, it is applied to the rest of Humanity, each time more vicious than the last..

You got that right :)

directly. It's a "safe" way to take Bush/Cheney down (or, in any case, to curtail them), without seriously threatening our monstrous "military-industrial complex," or the phony "war on drugs" and its prison-industrial complex and its filthy operations in Latin America*. The real scandal in the DoJ may be the "war on drugs," with the political scandal (the firings) being only a side scandal (or a connecting scandal). But the "war on drugs" has--at least in the past--been a bipartisan sacred cow (milk cow, boondoggle). That Rove and Gonzales would be firing US attorneys for political reasons, pressuring US attorneys to prosecute on a political basis, and planting Bushite political operatives in US attorney positions to (among other things) cover up vast Bushite wrongdoing, is not all that surprising--and, although it involves crimes like obstruction of justice and lying to Congress, and although it rapes and ruins any ethical tradition in the DoJ, these offenses pale into significance next to Bushite war crimes, Bushite theft, and the Bush Junta as a criminal syndicate and terrorist organization itself--involved in illicit weapons profiteering, drug trafficking, torture for profit, death squads and assassinations. And this is the problem for politicians who support the "military-industrial complex" and the US "war on drugs": The Bush Junta doesn't play by the rules. It is giving war and the police state a bad name. And all the filthy global corporate predators who are connected to these US federal boondoggles--and to whom many of our politicians are in thrall--don't want THEIR activities exposed or their power threatened. How to curtail Bush/Cheney--who are making them all look so bad--and RETAIN global corporate predator control of our government?

Nixon slaughtered about a million people in Southeast Asia. That crime pales into insignificance next to the Watergate and Ellsberg burglaries. The burglaries are related to that slaughter, of course. (They were apparently intending to plant bugs in the DNC headquarters during the antiwar presidential campaign of Democratic candidate George McGovern; and they were trying to find dirt on Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Vietnam War whistleblower.) Nixon was impeached and forced to resign because he was involved in providing hush money to the burglars (caught on tape in the Oval Office), not because he was napalming and bombing and shooting a million people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. That was a highly lucrative activity for the war profiteers, and was not permitted to come under serious scrutiny. Too bad. We might have stopped all this--the manufacture of unnecessary war--back then.

In that sense, you could regard Watergate as a whitewash. It preserved and protected the war machine--so that it could make a comeback under Bush/Cheney. And, considering the range and horror of the Bush Junta's crimes, you could regard this US Attorneys scandal in a similar way. As a distraction.

But history doesn't repeat itself, not really. It is a more like a gyre (W.B. Yeats' metaphor) with repeating themes, giving us repeated opportunities to solve certain problems in the human spirit. What would Yeats--an Irish rebel--think of the startling peace accord we saw the other day, between the Protestants and the Catholics in Northern Ireland? The end of a 500 year war. The human race, on the whole, is on an upward progressive trend. And, if we don't destroy our planet--which I think may depend on restoration of democracy in the US--we are headed toward a better world, as to human progressive values (equality, social justice, higher consciousness). Our biggest problem is our very success as a species--too many people for earth's limited resources, given the global corporate predator organization of the exploitation of resources for the profit of the few. This problem--the biggest crisis that the human race has ever encountered--may override and completely smother both the many scandals of the Bushites AND the efforts of the corporate rulers to limit the damage. The biggest scandal of all may be what the Bush Junta and its corporate ruler puppetmasters have NOT DONE to prevent the loss of our planet.

THIS scandal--the scandal of profiteering in a time of maximum peril to all life on earth--only barely grazed our consciousness, back during the Watergate era. Some were concerned about the environment. Virtually no one knew just how bad things already were. So, where do we stand on history's great gyre? How to place this US attorney firings scandal--and all the other even worse, and, indeed, mind-boggling, scandals of the Bush Junta--in context NOW? Watergate is an interesting precedent. We can learn a lot from it. But this is a different time. We have a much bigger problem to address than the Bush Junta tyranny, although it may be that destroying the Bush Junta with exposes and punishments is a necessary part of restoring democracy here. One lesson of Watergate is that--gratifying as it was to see that Vietnam war criminal Nixon go down in flames--the impacts of that impeachment were only a temporary setback to the war profiteers. The war machine survived it. As Yurbud so rightfully points out, the powers-that-be (war profiteers and associated global corporate predators) are trying the same tactic now--letting a little steam out of the system, letting a few scandals emerge, throwing some meat to the dogs. But will they succeed with lesser-scandal-as-distraction this time? Are we not at a very different place on gyre than we were 40 years ago? Are we not now looking at one of those repeating opportunities to solve problems of the human spirit? Is it not time for the American people--with its magnificent history of rebellion and social justice--to finally throw the war machine off our backs, and begin to address this overarching problem of our impacts on the natural world, with all the creativity and passion of which we are capable?

Maybe what we need is a Peoples' Congress, which exposes and indicts the Bushites (and any Democratic colluders), and sentences them all to lifetimes of cleaning bedpans in veterans' hospitals, and then organizes the democratic revolution that will be needed to enforce those indictments--to take over the actual Congress, and the White House--but with the goal of disposing of the past, and moving on with the positive goal of saving the planet. War is insane. Killing people to control the last of a resource is the old way and it is unacceptable. We need firmly to reject it--forevermore. Violent revolution is also insane. Killing people to create justice is the old way, and it, too, is unacceptable. But one thing we can retrieve from the past, for our use now, is the notion of our sovereignty as a people, and our right to say what's what and who shall rule, and that includes our right to dismantle all these bad actor corporations, and start over.

------------------------------


*(I think we've got another huge Bush/Cheney scandal boiling beneath the surface in Colombia. Their pal President Uribe and his chief of intelligence and also the head of Colombia's military--which the Bush Junta has larded with billions of our tax dollars--are involved in a major scandal in Colombia involving rightwing paramilitary drug trafficking, mass murder of leftists, union organizers and peasants, and a plot ot assassinate Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. Disclosures so far--amazing though they are (amazing because they are BEING disclosed)--may be only the tip of the iceberg of a fascist/Bushite plan to destabilize South America and reconquer it for the Global Corporate Predators who are running the Bush Junta. Stay tuned on this one. Considering the huge democratic revolution that is occurring in Latin America, this scandal may be the means both of gaining allies in our struggle against US militarism and corporate rule, and ridding ourselves of the present evildoers in a more comprehensive way, than with the US attorney scandal. And the two scandals may in fact be related. One of the US attorneys involved in purging other US attorneys--Johnny Sutton, in San Antonio--has been involved a coverup of DEA-sanctioned murders in Juarez, another US "war on drugs" scandal/horror. For the Sutton connection, see: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/3/26/205547/411.)

And, let us not forget that the Bush family reportedly owns 2% of Paraguay. Fernando's Hideaway...no?!

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading that. Like ice water being thrown in your face.

As a matter of fact, I enjoy reading all of your posts. You are one of my favorites.

I bow before you.

:applause: You did it again! :woohoo:



:kick::kick::kick:

:patriot:

Incredible post. I was hanging on every word.

Thanks PeacePatriot! It is those of you who stay further atop things, that make climbing the ladder easier!

my remarks above, just a bit. What Kennedy points out--that I hadn't quite gotten before--is that the US Attorney purge and installation of Bushcon toadies is part of a plan for the theft of the '08 elections. And in that case, it is DIRECTLY related to the continuation of unjust war and other fascist policy. This makes a lot of sense to me. There is a big voter/activist rebellion afoot, about stolen elections. I noticed evidence of this in the huge increase in Absentee Ballot voting in '06. It got up to 50% in some places. And I think it was a sign that, a) word about the rigged machines has really gotten around, and b) the voters were boycotting the machines--trying to get around the rigged electronics by voting AB. And there is quite a lot of other evidence that people are getting prepared for a knockdown dragout over stolen elections in '08. Many groups are active on this issue. Candidates are more alert, active and fighting back. (FL-13 comes to mind.) The grass roots of the Dem party are finally able to influence party policy on this. We have a great DNC chair. And we have a furious country--in all out revolt against the war and the Bushcons.

So-o-o-o-o, the Bushcons have a specific need for Bushcon US Attorneys, to try to keep a lid on the exposure of election fraud, to countersue and use all manner of tactics to cover up House/Senate thefts and theft of the Presidency, and also--not to be forgotten--to help dictate who gets to run for President and for other offices, in the primaries.

I'm much less inclined to think of the US Attorney scandal as a "distraction" or a secondary scandal after Kennedy's speech. I think he's right. It's about '08 and more election fraud. And thank God that a major Democrat is finally ripping the lid off this one.

Here is the OP on Kennedy's speech about this. My comment is #16.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2785889

This thread DOES tie back to other, much more significant issues. We've already seen that this ties back to the Duke Cunningham case, which has broad corruption implications. It also may well tie back to the Abramoff case, which is directly tied to AIPAC and, potentially, even the 9/11 attacks themselves. There is also a linkage to the efforts to manipulate the vote in 2004.

So this may not be the historical parallel you suggest. It may actually end up unearthing everything.

But the media needs to do their jobs. So I don't blame anyone for not holding their breath.

Probably forever. I would like to see a little progress in the War this time, though.

Alberto Gonzalez"--!!!

Dubya sure has turned the WH into Fantasy Island, but his series may face imminent cancellation, in favor of a reality show.

decide that bushco is no longer profitable, he will be taken out.

..But not in a manner that damages their empire and/or profits.

if he wasn't defeated in the 2004 election, he would be removed in a way that doesn't touch them.

The fact that one political party has a lock on a secret financing scheme carried out covertly, hence the 'national security' aspect to all of this, leads to the mother of all corruption scandals, and to the decades-old reporting of some deceased journalistic heroes, Danny Casolaro and Gary Webb.

This has been going on for a long long time folks. If Congress is JUST NOW figuring this out then you'll understand why that nice Christian girl, Monica Goodling, hired a lawyer best known for his S&L scandal work and moneylaundering and why her co-worker, Kyle Sampson, has Bret Berenson -- a 'former' WH counsel and tireless worker on USA Patriot Act tweaking -- as his attorney.

The Stonewall is up. Watch for limits to any testimony before Congress due to 'national security'. It would be better if a criminal grand jury were to call this pair up re any knowledge of GOP/CIA funding and/or obstructing justice in any ongoing investigations into what Carol Lam had started...

and since you can build a multi-million building back east with CIA money, as the media reported on but never followed up on, you'll NEVER KNOW who the let the contracts or anything else until someone 'slips up'

FBI probes Watergate prostitution allegations
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12634250/

"...it's all part of a growing ongoing investigation into corruption in defense and intelligence contracts, which already has sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham to prison and, legal sources say, may threaten others in Congress and the CIA."

I don't know how to use the hiliter on my computer, but you can see the last part

"...MAY THREATEN OTHERS IN CONGRESS AND THE CIA" !!!!! Screams out at you, if not the denser media jerks trying to contain this story.


With already existing Operation Mockingbird and sources in media and govt, the intell people know that this has gotten out of hand and too many people know what's going on. That leaves either stonewalling or 'limited hangout' containment of this story; trouble is, it's the MOTHER OF ALL CORRUPTION stories the media could attempt to cover or the Congress attempt to investigate.

on the handy-dandy tip-section to the right of that msnbc story:)
Maybe KO would be willin' to go into that?

even in criticizing *.

To actually go for the jugular and investigate something that potentially could destroy the GOP would be sacriledge to the M$M.

The real investigating will be via the internet and bloggers, not mainstream anything. When whistleblowers are finally free maybe the whole truth will come out. In the meantime just read Tim Weiner's book Blank Check and Alfred McCoy's book The Politics of Heroin. You can then follow the cookie crumbs to Congress where the real damage gets done with bend over backwards GOP congressional enablers to the M/I complex. All 'perfectly legal' of course.

"The Lyndie Englands of this era will go to prison, Bush and Cheney may go into involuntary early retirement, but those profited and stood to profit by Bush's actions, who told their papers and networks to salute so their oil and defense stocks would be shoot through the roof, they will escape unscathed.

If we were a people of laws, with equal laws for all, the soldiers tried for atrocities and torture would not serve one day more in prison than the heartless bastards in their mahogony lined country clubs. In fact, before a single soldier is convicted of any wrong-doing, the masters of war should be tried as mass murderers of hundreds of thousands. The foot soldiers should at worst get Pinochets fate of wondering if they will ever see prison even in last days of their life, and the masters of war should wonder if they will ever get some privacy while they are taking a shit on a steel toilet bolted to the wall of their cell."

which was a debatable crime, but the prosecutor said she didn't have enough evidence to convict him of genocide of billions, which he was guilty of.

If you haven't seen the show, you should rent it for the political analysis alone.

It's also one of the few shows to deal with labor issues at all.

You pulled all the right strings to convince me.

Here's to you, yurbud.
:toast:

on the topic of 'war for oil' and he verified what a lot of folks here and elsewhere have been saying for a long time: it IS a war for oil, but not really for MORE oil - a war for control of the oil that's there so that prices can be kept artificially high by constricting supply, thus enriching Chimpy and Cheney the Dick and their oil company buddies who helped write our energy policy in secret.
There's shit in this story so deep that a fleet of heavy equipment couldn't dig this unelected misadministration out of the mire in a millenium.

but I'd be happy.

that has roots no deeper than Bush's equivalent on Tattoo on Fantasy Island, Alberto Gonzales."

Mais c'est merveilleux!

:rofl: :applause: :rofl: :applause: :rofl: :applause: :rofl: :applause: :rofl: :applause: :rofl: :applause: