The Hollywood Liberal

Here is a long and excellent chapter from a book by Robert Parry, the man who broke the Iran-Contra story in the ’80s and has been there for all of it. This tells the whole story of how Bill Clinton let the Republcans off the hook for myriad scandals, and how it came back to bite him over the Lewinsky affair, and set the stage for Bush to steal the election, 9/11, and endless war. It’s a great article and should be read in full. Here are three quotes from the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

The Clintons and the Bushes

Consortium News
Excerpt
The Clintons and the Bushes

By Robert Parry
October 3, 2007

Editor’s Note: Given Hillary Clinton’s emergence as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, a Consortiumnews.com reader asked that we post the entire first chapter of Robert Parry’s 2004 book, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

The book opens with a scene early in the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency with him explaining to White House guests why he didn’t pursue geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

President Clinton made clear he saw historical truth as less important than his hopes for Republican cooperation on his domestic agenda. But this willingness to sweep major scandals under the rug left the White House back door ajar for a restoration of the Bush Family dynasty a half dozen years later – with disastrous consequences for the American Republic.

The relevance of this story today is that Bill Clinton’s misguided “pragmatism” seems to a characteristic of Hillary Clinton’s political persona, too, as she hedges her positions on the Iraq War and signals a willingness to support a dangerous confrontation with Iran…..

Clinton voiced his complaints about the media hostility, Stuart Sender saw his chance to ask Clinton why he hadn’t pursued leads about the Reagan-Bush secret initiatives in the Middle East.
“I had this moment to say to him, ‘What are you going to do about this? Why aren’t you going after them about Iran-Contra and Iraqgate?’” Sender said. “If the shoe were on the other foot, they’d sure be going after our side. … Why don’t you go back after them, their high crimes and misdemeanors?”
But Clinton brushed aside the suggestion…..

Lingering Questions

Today, as U.S. and Iraqi casualties from the Iraq War continue to mount, the historical questions still hang in the air:

Did the Reagan-Bush administration help Hussein get the chemical weapons that George W. Bush would later cite to justify an invasion?

Were secret Republican-Iranian negotiations in 1980 the start of entangling relationships that drew the United States deeper into the Middle East violence?

Did the subterranean financial tunnels connecting the Bush family and the Saudi royal family contribute to al-Qaeda’s determination to strike at the United States in 2001?

Would American history have taken a very different course if the investigations of the Reagan-Bush era had gone forward and the archives of secret documents been thrown open?

HL’s Take
Is the real reason that Clinton did not go after Bush Sr. That Clinton “Had to work with these people” and did not realize what a viscious attack dog media the Republicans had created? Or was there a darker, more sinister reason, like they are really both on the same side. Clinton sure seemed to Cozy up to Bush after his idiot son took over. The two ex Prez’s even went on the road together and did a comedy routine to raise money for Katrina victims. We did a comic about it on Nov. 6, 2006 Called “The Straight Man”

See More HL’s Comics Here

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 8:21 am and is filed under H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.