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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Hughes who wrote (9470)	10/14/1998 4:11:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 67261

He has more than his share of scandals listed at the following sites: pbs.org realchange.org Both Democratic and Republican administrations were trading arms for hostages. Whether it be munitions or spare parts for fighter planes or for military transports, it's still the same. By October 1980, the Shah was long gone by 2 years. Iran and Iraq had been fighting by backing insurgents for some time before it became a declared war in fall of 1980. The U.S. and Soviets alternately supplied both Iran and Iraq throughout the 80's, as did other countries. The Walsh report attempted to make the claim that Clarridge, who oversaw the CIA effort before the Boland Amendment, was still involved and that he had not simply transferred the operation to North under the NSC. Supplying the Afghanistan rebels with the Stinger missiles allowed them to counter the use of attack helicopters by the Soviets. The War Powers Act is essentially useless. There hasn't been a declared war since WW II and the U.S. hasn't been attacked since 1940. They can always use a U.N. military action as cover, such as the case for Gulf War, Iraq no-fly zone, Somalia, Rwanda, and so on.

To: Charles Hughes who wrote (9470)	10/22/1998 9:32:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

>>Congress kept trying to restrain the president until the Republican Senate was voted in. Hard to keep track of all your errors. The Senate was won by the Reps in 1980. Get it? Monica vs. Iran-Contra By C. Boyden Gray It was inevitable that sooner or later the "everyone does it defense" would be used to justify the Clinton-Lewinsky affair by reference to Iran-Contra. More specifically, Tony Lewis of The New York Times recently characterized Iran-Contra as a grave assault on our constitutional system, describing the current scandal as a mere tawdry honey trap by contrast. Whatever the eventual outcome, the current situation is more than a case of simple sex and more serious than Iran-Contra. Mr. Lewis claims that a diversion of funds from the Iran arms sales to the Contras was in violation of Congressional statute. This is quite an interesting revelation, in light of the fact that Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel, never charged, let alone convicted, anyone of violating any Congressional statute regarding either the sale of arms to Iran or the provision of aid to the Contras. The exchange of arms for hostages did constitute an exception to President Reagan's antiterrorism policy regarding hostages, but it was his policy and therefore waivable by him (subject to any political fallout that could and, in fact, did punish him severely). Nor did the aid to the Contras ever violate the Boland Amendments, which purported to ban U.S. aid, but which in fact secretly authorized select government agencies to give support (such as intelligence, medicine, and transportation). Moreover, the amendments never halted the publicly-known efforts to supplement Congressionally-authorized humanitarian funds for the Contras with funds from private parties and third countries. Congress, of course, eventually restored fully overt funding of military assistance, and the subsequent restoration of democracy in Nicaragua is history. President Reagan and then-Vice President Bush dealt with the Iran-Contra crisis with openness and candor, calling immediately for an independent counsel as well as a report by the Tower Commission, and ultimately acknowledging that arms had been exchanged for hostages. Neither man ever sought to impede any of the multiple -- some endless -- investigations and neither was ever the target of Mr. Walsh's inquiry. In the end, Iran-Contra was about America's foreign policy in Central America. Monicagate, on the other hand, involves the rule of law -- potential perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of public office for private gain. It is decidedly more than a simple case of unadulterated sex. The most overlooked point is how the White House used government personnel policy to support the president's misconduct. From beginning to end we see that taxpayers have been forced to help facilitate the affair in ways that posed real risks to national security. Because Monica's pink White House pass, which authorized entry only into the Old Executive Office Building, denied her access to the West Wing and the Oval Office without a telltale escort, she had to be provided with a much sought-after blue pass to enable her to enter and exit the Oval Office unnoticed. This necessitated a promotion to the Legislative Affairs Office, one of the most desirable offices in the White House and one for which some have suggested she was not entirely qualified. A full FBI field investigation is required of those who hold blue passes, but appears to have been ignored in Monica's case. Had it been conducted, it could easily have uncovered the pattern of conduct that is now well-known about her, which should have disqualified her from access to the West Wing of the White House. The problem was compounded by the apparent waiving of similar security requirements when the White House exiled Monica to the Press Office in the Pentagon. It is unlikely she would have survived a security check there and thus would not have been allowed to begin her 18-month odyssey with Linda Tripp, who also had been banished to the same office. Let's be clear: this is not a case of some right-wing conspiracy to put Monica together with the evil Linda Tripp. Rather, it is a case of a deliberate and repeated flouting of the procedures developed over decades to protect the presidency from precisely the kind of mess we now find ourselves in. No one has ever suggested that either President Bush or President Reagan stood to personally profit from Iran-Contra, that the underlying policies were failures, or that they refused to acknowledge the mistakes they did make. What we have in the Lewinsky case, however, may very well be an example of what Prof. Cass Sunstein has identified in a recent survey of historical precedents in The Washington Post as "impeachable 'corruption' [stemming from] the extraction of sexual favors in return for public benefits of some kind." At the very least, before all of this is over, we need a full public accounting of exactly what went on. C. Boyden Gray was White House counsel to President Bush. washtimes.com