No, Conservatives, Benghazi Is Not Worse Than Watergate

[mg]

The author of the following article says that anybody who thinks
Benghazi is worse than Watergate is insane and I totally agree with
him.

------------

"No, Conservatives, Benghazi Is Not Worse Than Watergate

Paul Waldman, November 19, 2012

For those who have forgotten history, a little reminder about what
happened during the Nixon administration.

On Friday, I got into a little Twitter tete-a-tete with Jim Treacher
of the Daily Caller over this post I wrote last week, which argued
that the reason conservatives are acting as though the aftermath of
the events in Benghazi is the scandal of the century is that they're
frustrated that Barack Obama hasn't had a major scandal, so they're
making as big a deal as possible out of whatever's handy. What ensued
opened my eyes to something I found surprising, though I suppose I
shouldn't have been so naïve. It turns out that many conservatives not
only believe Benghazi is far, far more serious than Watergate was,
they seem to have no idea what Watergate was actually about or how far-
reaching it was. After the number of Treacher's followers tweeting me
with "How many people died in Watergate? Huh? Huh?" reached triple
digits (each tweet no doubt considered by its author to be a snowflake
of insight), I decided that since the story broke 40 years ago, we all
might need a reminder of why Watergate was, in fact, a really big
deal.

The first and most important thing to remember is that when we say
"Watergate," we aren't referring only to the break-in at the
Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate hotel. The break-in was
merely the event that triggered the investigations that would
eventually reveal the full magnitude of Richard Nixon's crimes and the
crimes committed by many of the people who worked for him. As Jonathan
Bernstein has written, for starters, imagine if Barack Obama were
suspicious of some former Bush administration officials now working at
the American Enterprise Institute and repeatedly ordered Rahm Emanuel
to get people to break in to AEI in order to steal files that could be
used to embarrass or blackmail those officials. Nixon did that (the
Brookings Institution was the think tank in question). Bernstein goes
on:

The president's men, sometimes at Nixon's instructions, sometimes
with his knowledge, and sometimes perhaps without his direct
instructions or knowledge but always in keeping with his general
orders to his top staff, also planted spies in the camp of Democratic
campaigns; broke into Democratic headquarters, photographed documents,
and planted bugs; broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's
psychiatrist in order to learn things that could be used to destroy
his image in the press; attempted to plant left-wing materials in the
home of the guy who shot George Wallace; planned to (and perhaps did)
selectively leak classified materials about foreign policy in order to
hurt the Democrats; forged materials about foreign policy (the death
of South Vietnam's President Diem) in order to plant false stories in
the press that would hurt the Democrats; wiretapped government
officials; paid a private investigator to tail Ted Kennedy; performed
other dirty tricks such as forged letters intended to manipulate the
Democratic presidential nomination process (efforts that may indeed
have been successful); and other illegal, abuse and unethical actions
-- this is not a comprehensive list.

Those were the original crimes. What followed was obstruction of
justice as the White House, with the active leadership of the
president, lied to FBI investigators and grand juries, destroyed
evidence, suborned perjury by prearranging false testimony; suborned
perjury by paying off witnesses and either promising or at least
hinting at the promise of presidential pardons in exchange for false
testimony, and using the authority of the presidency to derail and
undermine FBI investigators and prosecutors. Again, the president was
personally actively involved in all of those things.

The scandal also revealed so many repugnant statements and acts, some
of them illegal and some of them not, that I suppose it's hard to keep
them all in your head. For instance, Judeophiles that conservatives
have become, they may like to forget that the White House tapes showed
Nixon to be a vicious anti-Semite ("The government is full of Jews.
Second, most Jews are disloyal") who ordered his staff to assemble
lists of Jews working within the executive branch so he could identify
his enemies (the aide who carried out a Jew-counting operation in the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Fred Malek, is to this day a major
Republican fundraiser). Of course, there was also the "enemies list"
of Nixon opponents targeted for harassment; one memo detailed "how we
can use the available federal machinery to screw our political
enemies." Among the crimes planned but never executed, the most
colorful has to be G. Gordon Liddy's plan to murder columnist Jack
Anderson. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal
wiretapping; today he is a popular conservative radio host. Among
those who ended up going to prison for their crimes in the Watergate
scandal were the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, and
the president's chief domestic policy adviser. The scandal was so
damning that facing impeachment and almost certain conviction, the
president of the United States resigned.

The point is "Watergate" was not just a break-in. It was a panoply of
government malfeasance and outright criminality the likes of which the
country had never seen before and will probably never see again.

It is true, as my conservative friends point out, that no one actually
died in Watergate, while there were four deaths in Benghazi. Those
deaths were a terrible tragedy. But unless some evidence emerges that
President Obama or somebody else in his administration, through some
act of corruption or misconduct, actually caused those deaths, the
deaths don't raise the magnitude of the "scandal" past that of other
scandals that weren't related to any deaths. For instance, 241 service
members Ronald Reagan sent to Beirut were killed in the bombing of
Marine barracks in October 1983, but I'll bet that not one of my angry
Twitter correspondents considers that a "Reagan administration
scandal" (nor, by the way, did almost any Democrats at the time,
rightly or wrongly).

For the record, I agree with Kevin Drum on this point: Let's go ahead
and investigate what happened in Benghazi. If that investigation helps
us improve security for our personnel operating in dangerous places,
that would be a positive outcome. But let's be honest: Republicans
aren't worked into a lather about this because of their long-standing
passionate commitment to security at our embassies and consulates.
They're hoping that if we keep digging, some kind of nefarious
behavior will be discovered, and they'll be able to use it to
embarrass the administration. That's politics, of course, so it isn't
all that surprising. But that's all it is. And the idea that Susan
Rice going on television and delivering some slightly inaccurate
talking points constitutes a "cover-up" on par with the Nixon
administration suborning perjury, paying hush money, and obstructing
justice in a whole variety of other ways? That's just insane."

http://prospect.org/article/no-conservatives-benghazi-not-worse-watergate

[wizardr...@msn.com]

On Wednesday, May 22, 2013 5:48:26 AM UTC-4, mg wrote:
> The author of the following article says that anybody who thinks Benghazi is worse than Watergate is insane and I totally agree with him. ------------ "No, Conservatives, Benghazi Is Not Worse Than Watergate Paul Waldman, November 19, 2012 For those who have forgotten history, a little reminder about what happened during the Nixon administration. On Friday, I got into a little Twitter tete-a-tete with Jim Treacher of the Daily Caller over this post I wrote last week, which argued that the reason conservatives are acting as though the aftermath of the events in Benghazi is the scandal of the century is that they're frustrated that Barack Obama hasn't had a major scandal, so they're making as big a deal as possible out of whatever's handy. What ensued opened my eyes to something I found surprising, though I suppose I shouldn't have been so naïve. It turns out that many conservatives not only believe Benghazi is far, far more serious than Watergate was, they seem to have no idea what Watergate was actually about or how far- reaching it was. After the number of Treacher's followers tweeting me with "How many people died in Watergate? Huh? Huh?" reached triple digits (each tweet no doubt considered by its author to be a snowflake of insight), I decided that since the story broke 40 years ago, we all might need a reminder of why Watergate was, in fact, a really big deal. The first and most important thing to remember is that when we say "Watergate," we aren't referring only to the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate hotel. The break-in was merely the event that triggered the investigations that would eventually reveal the full magnitude of Richard Nixon's crimes and the crimes committed by many of the people who worked for him. As Jonathan Bernstein has written, for starters, imagine if Barack Obama were suspicious of some former Bush administration officials now working at the American Enterprise Institute and repeatedly ordered Rahm Emanuel to get people to break in to AEI in order to steal files that could be used to embarrass or blackmail those officials. Nixon did that (the Brookings Institution was the think tank in question). Bernstein goes on: The president's men, sometimes at Nixon's instructions, sometimes with his knowledge, and sometimes perhaps without his direct instructions or knowledge but always in keeping with his general orders to his top staff, also planted spies in the camp of Democratic campaigns; broke into Democratic headquarters, photographed documents, and planted bugs; broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in order to learn things that could be used to destroy his image in the press; attempted to plant left-wing materials in the home of the guy who shot George Wallace; planned to (and perhaps did) selectively leak classified materials about foreign policy in order to hurt the Democrats; forged materials about foreign policy (the death of South Vietnam's President Diem) in order to plant false stories in the press that would hurt the Democrats; wiretapped government officials; paid a private investigator to tail Ted Kennedy; performed other dirty tricks such as forged letters intended to manipulate the Democratic presidential nomination process (efforts that may indeed have been successful); and other illegal, abuse and unethical actions -- this is not a comprehensive list. Those were the original crimes. What followed was obstruction of justice as the White House, with the active leadership of the president, lied to FBI investigators and grand juries, destroyed evidence, suborned perjury by prearranging false testimony; suborned perjury by paying off witnesses and either promising or at least hinting at the promise of presidential pardons in exchange for false testimony, and using the authority of the presidency to derail and undermine FBI investigators and prosecutors. Again, the president was personally actively involved in all of those things. The scandal also revealed so many repugnant statements and acts, some of them illegal and some of them not, that I suppose it's hard to keep them all in your head. For instance, Judeophiles that conservatives have become, they may like to forget that the White House tapes showed Nixon to be a vicious anti-Semite ("The government is full of Jews. Second, most Jews are disloyal") who ordered his staff to assemble lists of Jews working within the executive branch so he could identify his enemies (the aide who carried out a Jew-counting operation in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Fred Malek, is to this day a major Republican fundraiser). Of course, there was also the "enemies list" of Nixon opponents targeted for harassment; one memo detailed "how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." Among the crimes planned but never executed, the most colorful has to be G. Gordon Liddy's plan to murder columnist Jack Anderson. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping; today he is a popular conservative radio host. Among those who ended up going to prison for their crimes in the Watergate scandal were the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, and the president's chief domestic policy adviser. The scandal was so damning that facing impeachment and almost certain conviction, the president of the United States resigned. The point is "Watergate" was not just a break-in. It was a panoply of government malfeasance and outright criminality the likes of which the country had never seen before and will probably never see again. It is true, as my conservative friends point out, that no one actually died in Watergate, while there were four deaths in Benghazi. Those deaths were a terrible tragedy. But unless some evidence emerges that President Obama or somebody else in his administration, through some act of corruption or misconduct, actually caused those deaths, the deaths don't raise the magnitude of the "scandal" past that of other scandals that weren't related to any deaths. For instance, 241 service members Ronald Reagan sent to Beirut were killed in the bombing of Marine barracks in October 1983, but I'll bet that not one of my angry Twitter correspondents considers that a "Reagan administration scandal" (nor, by the way, did almost any Democrats at the time, rightly or wrongly). For the record, I agree with Kevin Drum on this point: Let's go ahead and investigate what happened in Benghazi. If that investigation helps us improve security for our personnel operating in dangerous places, that would be a positive outcome. But let's be honest: Republicans aren't worked into a lather about this because of their long-standing passionate commitment to security at our embassies and consulates. They're hoping that if we keep digging, some kind of nefarious behavior will be discovered, and they'll be able to use it to embarrass the administration. That's politics, of course, so it isn't all that surprising. But that's all it is. And the idea that Susan Rice going on television and delivering some slightly inaccurate talking points constitutes a "cover-up" on par with the Nixon administration suborning perjury, paying hush money, and obstructing justice in a whole variety of other ways? That's just insane." http://prospect.org/article/no-conservatives-benghazi-not-worse-watergate

Watergate was definitely worse. It involved the theft of an election, mass distribution of lies through the media, untold sums of money theft, and at least five people murdered. There, that should make any self-respecting liberal feel better. Sometimes delusional thinking is what pulls some people through, especially when their polotical thinking sits left of center.

[mg]

On May 23, 10:19 am, wizardryofoz...@msn.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 22, 2013 5:48:26 AM UTC-4, mg wrote:

> > The author of the following article says that anybody who thinks Benghazi is worse than Watergate is insane and I totally agree with him. ------------ "No, Conservatives, Benghazi Is Not Worse Than Watergate Paul Waldman, November 19, 2012 For those who have forgotten history, a little reminder about what happened during the Nixon administration. On Friday, I got into a little Twitter tete-a-tete with Jim Treacher of the Daily Caller over this post I wrote last week, which argued that the reason conservatives are acting as though the aftermath of the events in Benghazi is the scandal of the century is that they're frustrated that Barack Obama hasn't had a major scandal, so they're making as big a deal as possible out of whatever's handy. What ensued opened my eyes to something I found surprising, though I suppose I shouldn't have been so naïve. It turns out that many conservatives not only believe Benghazi is far, far more serious than Watergate was, they seem to have no idea what Watergate was actually about or how far- reaching it was. After the number of Treacher's followers tweeting me with "How many people died in Watergate? Huh? Huh?" reached triple digits (each tweet no doubt considered by its author to be a snowflake of insight), I decided that since the story broke 40 years ago, we all might need a reminder of why Watergate was, in fact, a really big deal. The first and most important thing to remember is that when we say "Watergate," we aren't referring only to the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate hotel. The break-in was merely the event that triggered the investigations that would eventually reveal the full magnitude of Richard Nixon's crimes and the crimes committed by many of the people who worked for him. As Jonathan Bernstein has written, for starters, imagine if Barack Obama were suspicious of some former Bush administration officials now working at the American Enterprise Institute and repeatedly ordered Rahm Emanuel to get people to break in to AEI in order to steal files that could be used to embarrass or blackmail those officials. Nixon did that (the Brookings Institution was the think tank in question). Bernstein goes on: The president's men, sometimes at Nixon's instructions, sometimes with his knowledge, and sometimes perhaps without his direct instructions or knowledge but always in keeping with his general orders to his top staff, also planted spies in the camp of Democratic campaigns; broke into Democratic headquarters, photographed documents, and planted bugs; broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in order to learn things that could be used to destroy his image in the press; attempted to plant left-wing materials in the home of the guy who shot George Wallace; planned to (and perhaps did) selectively leak classified materials about foreign policy in order to hurt the Democrats; forged materials about foreign policy (the death of South Vietnam's President Diem) in order to plant false stories in the press that would hurt the Democrats; wiretapped government officials; paid a private investigator to tail Ted Kennedy; performed other dirty tricks such as forged letters intended to manipulate the Democratic presidential nomination process (efforts that may indeed have been successful); and other illegal, abuse and unethical actions -- this is not a comprehensive list. Those were the original crimes. What followed was obstruction of justice as the White House, with the active leadership of the president, lied to FBI investigators and grand juries, destroyed evidence, suborned perjury by prearranging false testimony; suborned perjury by paying off witnesses and either promising or at least hinting at the promise of presidential pardons in exchange for false testimony, and using the authority of the presidency to derail and undermine FBI investigators and prosecutors. Again, the president was personally actively involved in all of those things. The scandal also revealed so many repugnant statements and acts, some of them illegal and some of them not, that I suppose it's hard to keep them all in your head. For instance, Judeophiles that conservatives have become, they may like to forget that the White House tapes showed Nixon to be a vicious anti-Semite ("The government is full of Jews. Second, most Jews are disloyal") who ordered his staff to assemble lists of Jews working within the executive branch so he could identify his enemies (the aide who carried out a Jew-counting operation in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Fred Malek, is to this day a major Republican fundraiser). Of course, there was also the "enemies list" of Nixon opponents targeted for harassment; one memo detailed "how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." Among the crimes planned but never executed, the most colorful has to be G. Gordon Liddy's plan to murder columnist Jack Anderson. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping; today he is a popular conservative radio host. Among those who ended up going to prison for their crimes in the Watergate scandal were the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, and the president's chief domestic policy adviser. The scandal was so damning that facing impeachment and almost certain conviction, the president of the United States resigned. The point is "Watergate" was not just a break-in. It was a panoply of government malfeasance and outright criminality the likes of which the country had never seen before and will probably never see again. It is true, as my conservative friends point out, that no one actually died in Watergate, while there were four deaths in Benghazi. Those deaths were a terrible tragedy. But unless some evidence emerges that President Obama or somebody else in his administration, through some act of corruption or misconduct, actually caused those deaths, the deaths don't raise the magnitude of the "scandal" past that of other scandals that weren't related to any deaths. For instance, 241 service members Ronald Reagan sent to Beirut were killed in the bombing of Marine barracks in October 1983, but I'll bet that not one of my angry Twitter correspondents considers that a "Reagan administration scandal" (nor, by the way, did almost any Democrats at the time, rightly or wrongly). For the record, I agree with Kevin Drum on this point: Let's go ahead and investigate what happened in Benghazi. If that investigation helps us improve security for our personnel operating in dangerous places, that would be a positive outcome. But let's be honest: Republicans aren't worked into a lather about this because of their long-standing passionate commitment to security at our embassies and consulates. They're hoping that if we keep digging, some kind of nefarious behavior will be discovered, and they'll be able to use it to embarrass the administration. That's politics, of course, so it isn't all that surprising. But that's all it is. And the idea that Susan Rice going on television and delivering some slightly inaccurate talking points constitutes a "cover-up" on par with the Nixon administration suborning perjury, paying hush money, and obstructing justice in a whole variety of other ways? That's just insane."http://prospect.org/article/no-conservatives-benghazi-not-worse-water...

>
> Watergate was definitely worse.  It involved the theft of an election, mass distribution of lies through the media, untold sums of money theft, and at least five people murdered.  There, that should make any self-respecting liberal feel better. Sometimes delusional thinking is what pulls some people through, especially when their polotical thinking sits left of center.

In my opinion, the further someone gets towards the extreme end on the
right or the left, the more delusional they are likely to be.

[El Castor]

On Thu, 23 May 2013 19:26:14 -0700 (PDT), mg <mgke...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>In my opinion, the further someone gets towards the extreme end on the
>right or the left, the more delusional they are likely to be.

There is a theory that the political universe is circular. If you go
far enough to the Left you meet your counterparts from the Right
coming from the opposite direction. I sort of subscribe to that,
although I've always considered the epitome of the Right to be the
Libertarian. I can't honestly say I'm aware of anything resembling a
Left Wing version of the Libertarian.

[mg]

On May 24, 1:41 am, El Castor <DrE...@justuschickens.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 23 May 2013 19:26:14 -0700 (PDT), mg <mgkel...@yahoo.com>

At the age of 21, right after I got out of the Army, I had a professor
at Brigham Young University who taught a class on environment/ecology/
evolution/over-population. One of the text books he used was entitled,
"Population, Evolution and Birth Control: A College of Controversial
Ideas". Actually, it looks like you can still buy that book for about
$1.45 from sellers at Amazon. It was a really weird course, especially
when you consider it was taught at BYU.

The professor was kind of freaky with his fixation on population
control. In fact, before he would get started on one of his rants, he
would ask the students to turn off their tape recorders. One of the
things that he used to like to do is put his face about 6 inches from
some other student's face and then talk awhile, and then ask the
student if being so close made them uncomfortable and they would
always say that it did, of course. I remember him quoting studies
showing that animals, like rats for instance, became neurotic when
packed to close together in cages. He actually predicted the terrorist
attack on New York about 40 years before it happened. His theory was
that the more dense the population becomes the more complicated the
infrastructure becomes and that makes it easier to sabotage and more
difficult for any sort of government to manage and the standard of
living automatically decreases.

So, in other words, I believe that the type of government that works
the best depends on a variety of factors including the culture, the
resources available, and the degree of homogeneity of the society, and
population density, etc. One system might work best under one set of
circumstances and another might work best under another set of
circumstances and a system that worked well 100 years ago, might not
work very well 100 years later.

I suppose, for instance, that most everyone was a libertarian 250
years ago. Can you imagine, for example, a tax collector knocking on
Daniel Boone's cabin door back in the mid 1700's and telling him that
he's going to have to pay more taxes for the good of society? Or, can
you imagine that tax collector telling Daniel Boone that he's going to
have to contribute to a Social Security fund. Boone had ten children.
They were his retirement insurance plan.

On the other hand, though, how much of a true Libertarian can you be
if you live in a high-rise apartment in the middle of New York city?
What are you going to protest in that case? Are you going to protest
for your right to tear out your indoor plumbing and put an outhouse in
one of your bedrooms? :-) Or, are you going to protest against the
new stop light on First Street and Main and claim that it restricts
your freedom. :-)

[forbi...@gmail.com]

Libertarians are socially liberal. Typically they support abortion
rights. The more recent change in this seems to be politically
motivated. They favor the removal of vice laws.

The Marxist notion is that the government should fade away.
It relies upon an idealization of social humans caring for
each other.