Edited on Wed Nov-26-08 09:54 AM by L. Coyote
November 22 2008 By Scott Horton
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/11/hbc-90003905How does the George W. Bush presidency most resemble that of his father, George H.W. Bush? It may be best to wait to the last, agonizing days of reign of Bush the Lesser before making any call. Recall that Bush 41 left office with a flurry of highly controversial pardons, affecting a large number of individuals who were caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal. In December 1992, while Americans focused on the incoming Clinton Administration, Bush 41 wielded the pardon power to free former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others who had been convicted for crimes committed in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel handling the matter, had been gradually closing the circle on the affair, and increasingly the evidence was suggesting that Bush 41 himself had been at the center of it. He had, Walsh learned, withheld his personal diaries from investigators and made statements which were at least seriously misleading. By issuing the Iran-Contra pardons, Bush threw up a roadblock…on a road that headed straight to himself.
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