President Kerry should seek prosecutions.

[dawg]

The current administration has been unprecedented, in my lifetime, for its willingness to mislead both Congress and the American people. I believe the next President should instruct the Justice Dept. to aggressively investigate and prosecute any Bush administration figures, even the lower-level types, who can be proven to have committed crimes of any kind or to have perjured themselves in their testimony before Congress or other bodies. No mercy should be shown.

President Clinton made a tremendous mistake by not bringing the hammer down on the Iran-Contra perpetrators. I believe he let them pass into history as a gesture of bi-partisanship - he truly intended to be a uniter, not a divider. It was instead taken as a sign of weakness. The cabal behind Iran-Contra was emboldened to do it again, and they have done so. Only this time, its out in the open for all the world to see, and nobody is doing a thing to stop it. President Kerry can not afford to make the same mistake as President Clinton. These people only respect power, and they need to be made to realize that, they too, can be "touched" when the pendulum swings the other way.

[forgethell]

1. What goes around,

comes around.

[displacedtexan]

2. Absolutely!

Even Gerald Ford said he knew he was going to Hell because he pardoned Richard Nixon.

We can trace the current administrations' criminal behavior directly back to the Nixonites who survived (and even those went to prison) Watergate. Many of them have either returned to Govt positions of power or have radio shows!

Same with Iran-Contra.

You can't give these criminals "enough rope." "Enough rope" means that they will use it to hang US!

[Ironpost]

3. So many lies, so many lives lost

We the American people must stand up for what is right and demand that we give them they're day in court... What a sorry bunch bushco*

[dawg]

4. Even if we win in November ...

we will not hold the White House forever. (It probably would not be healthy for the country as a whole if we did.) So we need to make a clear and unmistakeable example of these people. This kind of behavior, from either party, is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

[Sean From Tampa]

5. Amen

Hallelujah!!!! Testify brother!!!!

This is what I've been complaining about for years - the Democratic party has the best ideas for this country, but it's run by a bunch of wussies.

But as far as Clinton not bringing the hammer down on Iran-Contra, that wasn't his fault. Bush I pardoned most of the key players before he left office.

It was the then-Democratic congress's fault for not pursuing Iran-Contra figures. They and the Democratic candidates in 1988 should have reminded the American people as often as possible that Iran is a country that has long supported terrorism and that anyone who sold them weapons put Americans in danger.

Today, Kerry and any Democrats in congress need to come out swinging. You can't win a fight purely defensively.

As I've said many times before in many places, watching my fellow liberals/progressives reminds me of my childhood. My father thought he was the reincarnation of the Marquis de Queensbury, who argued that a true gentleman should only fight with his fist. To do anything else in a fight is dirty fighting.

But by following my father's advice, I got my ass kicked on the schoolyard by people who had no qualms about ganging up on me, biting, kicking, using weapons, etc. No one ever went up to me afterward and said, "Well, you lost, but at least you fought fair."

Only when I was willing to get down-and-dirty was I able to earn the respect and fear of the neighborhood bullies.

The Democrats need to get-down-and-dirty too, if they are to survive as a party.

[newyawker99]

6. Hi Sean From Tampa!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Sean From Tampa]

8. Thanks for the welcome

[gratuitous]

7. Well, Iran/contra got decapitated

Two weeks before Cap Weinberger's trial was to begin, outgoing lame duck President George H.W. Bush issued pardons to Weinberger, Eliot Abrams, and others, effectively ending the Iran/contra investigation. Curiously, for all the bombast that came out after President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, the media were absolutely silent on Bush's pardons.

Weinberger's trial would have proved conclusively whether Bush himself was "out of the loop" on Iran/contra as he claimed, or whether he was involved up to his beady little eyeballs in trading arms for hostages and siphoning off the profits to fund Central American death squads.

And more recently, the Pentagon announced yesterday that it would be releasing memos signed by Donald Rumsfeld that authorized the torture in Iraq:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/21/rumsfeld.interrogation.me mos/index.html

Don't go to the link now, though. CNN has helpfully "memory holed" the story, and the memos Rumsfeld signed no longer exist.