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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Land Shark who wrote (33413)	6/8/2005 2:19:54 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

the top editorial writer for Philadelphia's major newspaper is right on target with this...fyi... PRESS HAS LOST ITS 'DEEP THROAT' WAYS philly.com Posted on Wed, Jun. 08, 2005 The Philadelphia Daily News I WAS ON vacation in Turkey when I saw the story in the International Herald Tribune: "Deep Throat" had been revealed as W. Mark Felt, ex-FBI official. Drat! For sure, the revelation would be all over the news back home, touching off a virtual reunion of Watergate junkies. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, there was no chance to discuss it. It reminded me of when and where I heard that Watergate had climaxed in the resignation of Richard Nixon in August 1974 - and how much has changed. The hearings of the House impeachment committee had just begun that July when my mother and I left the Free World to visit our relatives behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia. For three weeks, until we overheard a conversation in Prague that Nixon had quit, we had heard no news at all about America's long national nightmare. How, after all, could the Communist-controlled press communicate the seriousness of a scandal precipitated by members of one political party trying to bug the headquarters of another? There was only one party in its entire circulation area. And what readers would be shocked that the leader of the nation had conspired to cover up a crime? Wasn't that part of the job description? The fact that the Watergate crimes were uncovered by a free and feisty press, and that the nation's courts and Congress held the president accountable, was a testimony to the strength of our democratic system - and an obvious contrast to our Communist competition. So, I wonder, would Watergate bring down a president today? Compared to the standard operating procedures of Team Bush, that scandal was mild indeed. A review: A House committee had voted three articles of impeachment, and we were headed to a trial in the U.S. Senate when Nixon was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court to turn over tapes recorded in the White House. Among them was a conversation that came to be known as the "smoking gun." Once out, even Nixon realized he had to resign. What was in it? A conversation with aides in which Nixon agreed to a plan to ask the FBI to go easy on the investigation. That's it. No one died. Billions of dollars weren't lost. America's reputation in the world wasn't irreparably damaged. Compare that to another "smoking gun" revealed only weeks ago: A memo written by a British official describing meetings with the Bush administration in July 2002. In the "Downing Street Memo," the official reports that, contrary to what the president was telling the world, Congress and the American people, he had already decided to invade Iraq. "... The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," the memo said. That's right: Evidence in black and white showing that the president had taken the nation to war under false pretenses. Yet the Downing Street Memo has garnered not Nixon-era bipartisan outrage, but a collective shrug - not only from the now-flaccid press but from beaten-down progressives: Of course Bush lied - we knew that. With Republicans dominating Congress and blocking investigations, there's no possibility that a successor to Howard Baker will get to ask, "What did the president decide, and when did he decide it?" So the remarkable U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has established an online petition for Americans to add their signatures to those of 89 congressional Democrats who have asked Bush to respond to the questions raised by the memo. It has garnered 160,000 signatures. Add yours at www.johnconyers.com. But don't expect the clock to go back to a time when principled Republicans joined Democrats to question their own party's president and uphold the Constitution. Deep Throat is 91. He and the rigorous media that held a president accountable are footnotes in history. Their contemporary counterpart? Deep Indifference. ____________________________________________ Carol Towarnicky is chief editorial writer of the Philadelphia Daily News. E-mail towarnc@phillynews.com.