Perverting democracy for politics

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by warch

History indeed. It will be interesting to view the legacy of Bush and his crew. Funny you bring up Clinton! Lying about a blowjob seems like such small potatoes, now.

When I hear discussions of impeachment these days, its usually referenced closer to Nixon's abuses of power and politicization. Nixon's disgrace will always include stories of his direction of crooked activity, lies and unconstitutional power grabbing, overshadowing any other positives of his terms. And again, now they seem rather quaint.

If our medal of freedom honorees are just innocent the "fall guys", their failures just the natural order, is that really worthy of this highest civilian honor or yet another example of politicization, to the point where the thing loses all meaning in the cynicism?

I believe that it (medal of freedom or what ever it is called) lost it's luster years ago. It is the best that the US can do short of knighthood, something we don't have. Pick a president, they all have had significant failings.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

snip~ I doubt any of them are hidding in some kind of disgrace you want to apply to them. In fact, I bet they are doing quite well.

Right on the mark. Lobbying, speaking tours, book deals, corporate perks for their influence with their unindicted co-conspirators.

Quite well indeed. There may not be honor among thieves, but there are plenty of honorariums.

[Happy Monkey]

Heck, Ollie North and G. Gordon Liddy became popular radio hosts, and their claims to fame were helping Republican Presidents commit crimes.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Heck, Ollie North and G. Gordon Liddy became popular radio hosts, and their claims to fame were helping Republican Presidents commit crimes.

Ollie North ran for office in Virginia, which he was entitled to do since he was not a convicted felon.

[xoxoxoBruce]

He can buy a gun, too.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

He can buy a gun, too.

Cool.

[warch]

I have to admit...Liddy does crack me up. Its like he was called up from central casting. Kind of a Colonel Flagg....

[Urbane Guerrilla]

HM, bleeding money from one set of totalitarians in order to overthrow another set of totalitarians hardly amounts to criminality. To call it so shows just what's wrong with your kind of thinking -- it's so morally confused it prefers to do favors for despots rather than work to their destruction and/or removal and their replacement by democracies, which are better behaved as history shows. Since when has "being nice to despots, that maybe they won't hurt us" ever brought success, peace, or indeed anything worth having? When you pay the Danegeld, do you get rid of the Dane? Republican Presidents, incidentally, are as far from despots as you're likely to get, at least in this day and age. Republican Presidents have this habit of crossing despots up, sometimes in the grand manner: Bush took down two despotisms in the same year, Reagan walked out of the Rejkjavik summit rather than accept Gorbachev's con-job, leaving Gorby to instead actually try and do something on his nation's own resources which were inadequate to keep the Soviet system and structure intact and effectual in foreign policy -- the Republican record in the past twenty-five years, if not the past fifty, is really rather reassuring. The Democrats -- well, they disappoint. They've not taken down a despotism since Truman. They've started wars, and haven't won a one of them, they prescribe socialist nostrums to fix things they say are broken, or they get kicked around by Soviets who assert themselves in foreign policy, leaving the likes of Jimmy Carter wondering what happened.

Some of this is no doubt due to this being the nuclear age: certain styles of warmaking have indeed fallen out of fashion. The Republican Presidents, however, seem better at succeeding at these constrained wars than the Democratic ones.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Reagan walked out of the Rejkjavik summit rather than accept Gorbachev's con-job, leaving Gorby to instead actually try and do something on his nation's own resources which were inadequate to keep the Soviet system and structure intact and effectual in foreign policy -- the Republican record in the past twenty-five years, if not the past fifty, is really rather reassuring. The Democrats -- well, they disappoint. They've not taken down a despotism since Truman.

Remember, a political agenda can easily rewrite history. Gorbechev's con job? He was offering to end the cold war. But then wacko extremists would do anything to restart that war. And so we have Putin's candid warnings.

Meanwhile, Urbane Guerrilla uses his political agenda to rewrite history. What happened to Hati's Baby Doc Duvalier and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic? Amazing that they were not taken down because Clinton did it. We must rewrite history.

Amazing that a Democrat could accomplish same thing without physical invasions. Instead a Democrat talked both dictators out of power. Clearly Clinton must be evil because he did not kill people. Instead a Democrat talked both solutions.

If UG had a grasp of reality, then he would have done what he posted he would do on 9 Nov 2006 and again on 10 Feb 2007.

So far, I'm fascinated. I'll probably be talking about this book's ideas from time to time.

Then UG discovered Barnett's book was about military reality; not about a wacko extremist political agendas where big guns solve all problems.

Urbane Guerrilla is caught and exposed rewriting history for a political agenda. But perverting history is what extremists do. No wonder extremists love what Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson preach.

BTW, after Urbane Guerrilla was caught having blamed Saddam for 11 September, notice UG then went quiet. Extremists will do anything to avoid reality. Going quiet was his only option.

UG – when are you going to discuss that Thomas Barnett book that shows why “Mission Accomplished” is a military defeat thank’s to George Jr and his cast of wackos. Why do you remain so silent? Why does your political agenda repeatedly clash with reality?

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

HM, bleeding money from one set of totalitarians in order to overthrow another set of totalitarians hardly amounts to criminality.

If you're talking about Iran-Contra, then you are justifying 'selling arms to an enemy' as 'bleeding money from one set of totalitarians'. Wow, is that the same thing as 'advancing to the rear'?

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

When you pay the Danegeld, do you get rid of the Dane?

Again, if your first comment is in support of Iran-Contra, which was the ultimate 'Danegeld (ransom)', then your second comment on the dangers of such is remarkably inconsistent.

I am genuinely confused here. Was your first comment really in support of Iran-Contra?

BTW, I hope the shelf life of a TOW missile is less than 20 years or that Iran expended all of them against Iraq, or if we do invade Iran our troops will be on the receiving end of US-made weapons.


From Iran-Contra at Wikipedia

Arms transaction

The Iran-Contra report found that the sales of arms to Iran violated United States Government policy; it also violated the Arms Export Control Act.[2] Overall, if the releasing of hostages was the purpose of arms sales to Iran, the plan was a failure as only three of the 30 hostages were released.[9]

First arms sale

Michael Ledeen, a consultant of Robert McFarlane, asked Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres for help in the sale of arms to Iran.[11] The general idea behind the plan was for Israel to ship weapons to Iran, then the US would reimburse Israel with the same weapons. The Israeli government required that the sale of arms meet high level approval from the United States government, and when Robert McFarlane convinced them that the U.S. government approved the sale, Israel obliged by agreeing to sell the arms. [11] Reagan approved McFarlane's idea to reach out to Iran on July 18, 1985 while in a hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery.[12] [12] In July 1985, Israel sent American-made BGM-71 TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles to Iran through an arms dealer named Manucher Ghorbanifar, a friend of Iran's Prime Minister. One hostage, reverend Benjamin Weir was subsequently released; despite the fact that arms were being sold to Iran, only Weir was released. This resulted in the failure of Ledeen's plan [8] with only three shipments through Israel. [11]

Subsequent dealings

Robert McFarlane resigned in December 1985[13]. He was replaced by Admiral John Poindexter. On the day of McFarlane's resignation, Oliver North, a military aide to the United States National Security Council (NSC), proposed a new plan for selling arms to Iran. This time, there were two new ideas. Instead of selling arms through Israel, the sale was to be direct. Second, the proceeds from the sale would go to the Contras at a markup. Oliver North wanted a $15 million markup, while contracted Iranian arms broker Manucher Ghorbanifar added a 41% markup of his own. [14] Other members of the NSC were in favor of North's plan. John Poindexter authorized the plan, and it went into effect. [15]
At first, the Iranians refused to buy the arms at the inflated price because of the excessive markup imposed by North and Ghorbanifar. In February 1986, 1000 TOW missiles were shipped to Iran.[15] From May to November 1986, there were additional shipments of miscellaneous weapons and parts.[15] Reagan claimed that the total of all arms sales was less than a planeload.[5]

[xoxoxoBruce]

Bah, not to worry... they used up all those tow missiles water skiing.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

HM, bleeding money from one set of totalitarians in order to overthrow another set of totalitarians hardly amounts to criminality.

It does if the method you use is against the law. Which it was. Hence the shredded documents, the amnesiac testimony, the 5th-amendment-immunity testimony, the convictions, and the pardons.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And the chick with the document padded bra. What was her name, Hall?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Guys, the Contras still won -- and we helped. This made a better Nicaragua, and it's still a better Nicaragua twenty years later. Is breaking laws written to keep us helpless at foreign policy actually a bad thing? I suppose it depends on what set of laws you think might be the highest. And how willing you are to get in trouble by one set while adhering to another.

Recall there was blatant and chronic Marxist-supporting going on in Congress at the time, and they passed Marxist-nasty-regime-supporting legislation. Senator Kerry was a committed partisan of the Marxists then, as his voting record irrefutably shows.

[Griff]

It is a better place today. We can't play the "what if?" history game, but these interventions bite us on the ass as often as they work out. Interesting aside ex-Sandinista Daniel Ortega is the President these days. Did we help more than we hurt? Maybe, but we did lose credibility with the under-class. It is a beautiful place, maybe American tourist dollars will soften hearts.