From: rjwill6@PacBell.COM (Rod Williams)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.bush
Subject: Re: Today show (and ramblings)
Date: 11 Sep 92 22:35:50 GMT
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Francisco

> fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis) writes:

>Bush's current languid campaign presence suggests one of 2 possible
>scenarios: 1) he has given up or (more likely) 2) October will
>bring CARPET BOMBING on the draft issue. I don't imagine that
>Bush raised all that dough to shuck and nod through tepid re-hashes
>of his Same Old Same Old. Clinton had better have a Better Idea
>or - better yet -- a confessional tape from Jennifer with a J. 

Writing in today's (9/11/92) New York Times, Anthony Lewis
calls the press "dismally negligent in failing to pin Mr.
Bush down on what he did and knew" about the Iran-Contra
affair.  He goes on:

    Mr. Bush's consistent position has been that he was
    uninformed and uninvolved as Vice President when the
    decisions were made in 1985 and 1986 to trade arms to Iran
    for American hostages.  He said that he was not aware then
    that Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of
    Defense Caspar Weinberger were opposed to the plan.

    He was not "in the loop," Mr. Bush told David Broder of
    The Washington Post in August 1987.  He said:

    "If I had sat there and heard George Schultz and Cap
    [Weinbereger] express it [opposition] strongly, maybe I
    would have had a stronger view.  But when you don't know
    something, it's hard to react."

    In a television interview in December 1987, the then Vice
    President put it even more flatly: "If I had a lot more
    knowledge of what was going on, I would have said, 'Don't
    do this.'"

    But in fact Mr. Bush was not uninformed.  He did sit there
    and hear Mr. Schultz and Mr. Weinberger express their
    strong opposition.  Or so many official sources say.

Lewis goes on to quote from official State Department records,
and from testimony by then National Security advisor John
Poindexter and Schultz at the Congressional Iran-Contra
hearings, and from a newly-published note written by Schultz,
that Bush was indeed present at the White House meetings that
discussed the arms deals with Iran.  Poindexter told a
colleague, "Most importantly President and Vice President are
solid in taking the position that we have to try" to carry out
the arms-for-hostages deal.

Lewis believes the press has been reluctant to tackle Bush
about Iran-Contra since Dan Rather tried to pin him down on it
in his infamous live interview on CBS News during the
Presidential election campaign in 1988, when Bush successfully
accused Rather of "unfairness" in pressing the issue.

He concludes: "But this was the worst government scandal in
years, a crude violation of the Constitution that damaged the
national interest.  It matters whether Mr. Bush is telling the
truth about his part in it."
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rod williams -=- pacific bell -=- san francisco -=- rjwill6@pacbell.com
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