More from Sy Hersh’s exposé of Bush’s continuation of Nixon’s and Reagan’s attempts to subvert democracy by setting up secret black ops units within the government:
Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then — notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams — are involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress.
As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office” — a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
The anticonstitutional wing of the Republican Party (or do I repeat myself?) keeps learning lessons from each of the messes it keeps making. The lesson of Vietnam, to these deep thinkers, was to muzzle the press. George Herbert Walker Bush did this to great effect during his little Panama weenie-wagger, his son to lesser effect with the embedding process in Iraq.
But none of these congenital meddlers ever stumbles on the real and perfectly obvious lesson taught by their own repeated catastrophes. That lessson, briefly stated:
Mind your own damn business, America.
