A DU'er asked a while back what Watergate was like, well here you

[morningglory]

have the same thing, daily bombshells. However, that was a small crime compared to this looting of the treasury and getting our children killed while invading a sovereign nation.

[tigereye]

1. not sure I agree

it was a really big deal at the time from a structural standpoint because the President really thought he could get away with a blatantly criminal act that everyone knew about. ( well I guess there are some parallels :)).

But the Saturday night massacre was a big deal, the resignations of top folks were a big deal, the hearings were a big deal ( I watched them when I was in 9th grade) and the vote for impeachment was really powerful ( Barbara JOrdan was particularly amazing) shoocking to most and solemn. I think the country, from a constitutional standpoint and generally, was shocked and rocked to it's foundations. That's why the Clinton "impeachment" was so Fu...ing absurd by comparison. This was brought back to me since Sam Dash and Archibald Cox died recently.

[1monster]

2. "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"

That question was asked over and over and over again. We finally found out that he knew it all and knew it very early...

But still, Watergate was not as bad as what we have going on today. But what Nixon and Kissinger did in Southeast Asia and the consequences to Cambodia and Laos were unforgivable. Iraq may end up being just as bad or worse.

[Unperson 309]

3. There Was A Sense Of Dread...

among the rightwingers. Daily the news carried more and more revelations.

Remember also that the televised hearings were going out to a poipulace that had been relatively innocent, in the dark and in denial about just how *dirty* politics was!

I am looking at my "Watergate tablecloth" right now. I got it out when I heard about Bush rolling in lawyers. It is a berautiful 4' X 4' lacy tatted creation of white frothy thread. My grandmother sat, day after day, listening in dawning horror and fury to the hearings and she tatted and tatted and tatted. "I *had* to do something with my hands! They were raw from it, but if I didn't have that thing, I'd have gone crazy!". When I die, it will go to my grandchildren with a note on the history of it.

Watergate was the event that wakened two or three generations of Americans. It was the end of trusting the government or authority in general. If the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the alarm clock going off, then Watergate was the snooze alarm, set on a loud rock station... nobody was asleep after that. The hippies had been right... I think the codicil to it all was McNamara's admission, years later, that he had been wrong not to insist on the end of the Vietnam War.

The comparison ends, there, however... THIS administration plays a HELL of a lot dirtier than Nixon's fortuitously acronymed Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) ever did. Tapes? You can damn BET that if any exist, they are *gone* by now... or soon will be! Papers, ditto. Any hope of reconstructing the "dirty tricks" of this bunch had better rest on armor plated, triple guarded, seriously pissed off eye witnesses who are fearless and willing to sing like canaries!

Which brings me to a question...

There is NOT a doubt in my mind that SOMEONE (or several someones) will be dead before this ends.
accident, suicide, Plame (excuse me... plane!) crash, infected papercut... there WILL be deaths.

Who do you think will snuff it before this ends? Tenet? Chalabi? Rove? "Rummy? Dubya? who does the Vince Foster Flip? How and when?

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