The Republican Iran-Contra success also encouraged conservatives to keep building the media infrastructure, adding major new voices on right-wing talk radio, Fox News and influential Internet sites through the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, on the Left, progressive funders continued to spurn proposals to build media.
War Resumed
After Texas Gov. George W. Bush wrested the presidential election away from Vice President Al Gore in 2000, the advocates of the Imperial Presidency were ready to consolidate their gains.
Again, Dick Cheney was at the forefront of the offensive.
As vice president, Cheney asserted secrecy over the meetings of his energy task force in early 2001. And after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, he helped formulate the strategy for pronouncing Bush as the all-powerful "war president" who had the right to wield whatever authority he wanted as long as the War on Terror lasted.
In his discussion with reporters on Dec. 20, 2005, Cheney elaborated on his vision about the inherent powers of the presidency.
"Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam both during the 70's served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area," Cheney said as Air Force Two took him on an inspection tour of the Middle East.
"Part of the argument in Iran-Contra was whether or not the president had the authority to do what was done in the Reagan years," Cheney said. "And those of us in the minority wrote minority views that were actually authored by a guy working for me, one of my staff people, that I think was very good at laying out a robust view of the president's prerogatives with respect to the conduct of especially foreign policy and national security matters."
Cheney also warned Democrats who don't accept this assertion of "robust" presidential powers that they can expect to be punished politically. "Either we're serious about fighting the War on Terror or we're not," Cheney said. [NYT, Dec. 21, 2005]
So, the gauntlet has been thrown down - and there are no prospects this time for finessing the outcome as Hamilton and the Democrats tried to do in the Iran-Contra Affair.
The choice is clear to American citizens, too. Either they accept the Imperial Presidency that gives Bush the authority to do whatever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism - from imprisonments without trial to detainee abuse to spying on anyone deemed a security threat - or they act now.
The battle lines are forming.
On one side are the White House legions arrayed with superior organization, extraordinary resources and state-of-the-art media artillery. On the other side are defenders of the democratic republic, a tattered band armed mostly with a belief that an unrestrained Executive is anathema to all that Americans have fought and bled for since an earlier generation of patriots confronted the forces of King George III on Lexington Green and at Concord Bridge.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
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