In this month's Vanity Fair, David Rose's piece reveals the following:
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
So much for Bush's love of democracy. We didn't require more evidence to unmask American imperialism, but here it is.
3 Comments:
No surprise there...
After all, we are talkin' 'bout Elliot Abrams here.
He knows his way around the "hire a thug" model - think back to Central America in the 80's.
What worries me is that the new Democratic administration will do the same as the last did in 1993 and not bring all this stuff into the open.
When Bill Clinton took office, there was a strong need for a real look at the activities of Abrams and his pals in the Iran Contra scandal.
Clinton wanted to bring everyone together and move his agenda forward and chose to forgo that investigation in the interests of bipartisanship.
That (and some Bush I pardons) has allowed Bush II and Abrams and others to pick up where Iran Contra left off.
There will be suggestions that the next President act in a similarly "bipartisan" manner.
Let us hope that the flat rocks all get turned over this time!
Thanks for posting a brief history of Abrams. I was going to mention his sordid past, but alas it's too depressing to think that the same damned people are put into influential positions. Bush's 2000 claim that he will restore dignity to the office is an absolute joke.
But your comments about how the Clinton administration dealt with the whole Iran/Contra mess is instructive, and has implications on deliberating about who should be the Democratic nominee. Obama runs on a platform of bipartisanship. Can we expect that, in the name of everyone getting along, he will simply set aside the too-numerous-to-count offenses of the Bush administration? If that were the case, then that strikes me as a strong argument against Obama. There's a fine line between committing injustice and facilitating it. If a subsequent administration fails to hold the previous one accountable, then we have injustice in perpetuity. On the other hand, with Obama we would hopefully have fresh faces and not just the same damn hacks reprising all the crap they couldn't accomplish in their previous incarnation. For instance, I am very happy that Samantha Power is one of his chief advisors. I don't know which consideration is weightier, but they are important to keep in mind.
Well, the title doesn't create the advisor... if Obama values Power's input he will still be able to seek it out.
I assume that she'd still be willing to share it.
I think that one of the most compelling reasons to support Hillary is that the Repugs have already put hammer to that metal... she has been annealed in the process giving her strength and a hardness as well.
Hillary has experience with the Swiftboaters - they cut their milk teeth on her and Bill.
They effectively destroyed the Bill Clinton presidency by using their media control to convince Joe Sixpack that something dishonorable had been done in the Whitehouse.
All of the other stuff, Whitewater, travelgate, and so on was Hillary centered.
70 million later all they had was a sidestep used by many (good Catholics for starters) which insists that without coitus relations are not sexual.
They won't be able to re-argue any of it and she would be unlikely to be surprised by the ferocity of their attack.
I don't know that the Obama's are really prepared for all that. It is one thing to consider viciousness, it is another to survive it.
I doubt that Hillary would be likely to give the Repugs a pass on the amazingly long and deep set of federal crimes they have committed.
I have waited all of my adult life for an accounting with those guys.
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