[Peace-discuss] Compare and Contrast

[David Johnson]

Compare and Contrast





>From investigative reporter Robert Parry who broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. 





So how do Watergate and Iran-Contra compare and contrast with Russia-gate?
One key difference is that in Watergate in 1972-73 and Iran-Contra in
1985-86, you had clear-cut crimes. By contrast, Russia-gate has been a
"scandal" in search of a specific crime. The DNC emails revealed that senior
Democrats did not maintain their required independence regarding the
primaries by seeking to hurt Sen. Bernie Sanders and help Clinton. The
Podesta emails pulled back the curtain on Clinton's paid speeches to Wall
Street banks and on pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.

Hacking into personal computers is a crime, but the U.S. government has yet
to bring any formal charges against specific individuals supposedly
responsible for the hacking of the Democratic emails. There also has been no
evidence that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russians in the hacking.


Another contrast between the earlier scandals (Watergate and Iran-Contra)
and Russia-gate is the degree of enthusiasm and excitement that the U.S.
mainstream media and congressional Democrats have shown today as opposed to
1972 and 1986. For several months, there was a flurry of attention to the
complex Iran-Contra scandal, but the big media still ignored evidence of a
White House cover-up and soon lost interest in the difficult work of
unraveling the convoluted networks for arms smuggling, money laundering and
cocaine trafficking.

Congressional Democrats also shied away from a constitutional confrontation
with the popular Reagan and his well-connected Vice President George H.W.
Bush. Today, the senior executives of The New York Times, The Washington
Post and other major news outlets have made no secret of their disdain for
the buffoonish Trump and their hostility toward Russian President Vladimir
Putin.


In other words, what is driving Russia-gate - for both the mainstream news
media and the Democrats - appears to be a political agenda, i.e., the desire
to remove Trump from office while also ratcheting up a New Cold War with
Russia, a priority for Washington's neoconservatives and their
liberal-interventionist sidekicks.

 

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