Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The 1968 election, Iran-Contra and the trail of Presidential crime

While I'm on a roll of quoting from Robert Perry's Consortium News, I should mention the current piece by Perry, Rethinking Watergate/Iran-Contra 03/09/2013. Charlie Pierce giveswhigh praise to Perry in reference to this article and the great work he's done on its topic in History Comes to Call Esquire Politics Blog 03/15/2013. Pierce writes:

Bob Parry is one of the unknown heroes of this business of mine. Almost alone, he stood against the Reagan era foreign policy at the height of Saint Ronnie's popularity, bringing the truth about the savagery that administration and its clients were bringing down on the people of Central America. He is still dogging the general scandal of Iran-Contra to this day and, since I think the non-prosecution of that episode, and the successful stonewalling by both Reagan and George H.W. Bush, was a decisive turning point in getting us to where we were when we launched the Iraq fiasco, I applaud him for that. He stayed true to his calling, never wrote a bad book about John Belushi, and didn't get scared even when he actually was threatened by White House operatives. [my emphasis]
The deadly thread that runs through Perry's work on Nixon's undermining of Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to the Watergate scandal to the "October Surprise" scheme by the Reagan campaing in 1980 to Iran-Contra is the corrupt practice of holding Presidents and other high officials harmless when they violate the law in serious ways.

Republican Presidents, at least. Congress impeached Bill Clinton over blowjobs.

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