Andrew Card confirms coverup

On meet the press, Andy Card confirmed that the Bush Administration will fight in court to defend the information that Cheney is hiding. These guys will wind up making Richard Nixon look honest.

I bet the list Cheney is protecting has only one name on it: Kenneth Ley.

I think Nixon was more or less honest enough for a President. OK, perhaps a little less:-)... but really not all that bad on the scale of honesty if we throw other world leaders into the mix.


If we have too honest a President, we may end up with have another Carter, and tough foreign negotiators, and hostage-takers, may walk all over us.


I'd rather have Nixon than Carter dealing with al Qaeda, and I'd rather have Bush than Gore for the same purpose, too.


A bit of internal dishonesty or corruption means little compared to getting nuked by a bunch of zealots.

Seems like you're equating honesty with incompetence and dishonesty with competence based on a few examples.


Nixon was more than just a "bit" dishonest or "corrupt." He was a pathological liar, a parnoid, anti-semitic, racist crook, a war criminal of the first order, certainly the most dangerous zealot of his time, the person most capable of nuking someone. He threatened to do so, made it part of his persona, "Mad" Nixon.


Certainly one can be tough and competent, as well as honest; and one can be weak and incompetent, and also dishonest. I don't think we have anything to fear from a president that is "too honest." What was Lincoln's nickname?

Andy: I'm not trying to say that the qualities are completely mutually exclusive. I'm just saying that it's very hard indeed to find a leader who is both effective and totally honest, especially since dealing with certain international forces may require some underhanded bargaining of sorts or dirty deeds at times.


Given a likely choice, I would opt for the effective leader who is a bit dishonest rather than the ineffective one who is totally honest, especially in today's dangerous world.


Yes, Abe Lincoln came to my mind too, but I don't think we're likely to find another Honest Abe anytime soon, even under a different moniker.

"it's very hard indeed to find a leader who is both effective and totally honest"


I would say it's very hard to find one who is either one of those things! All government officials are liars and nothing they say should be believed (I.F. Stone).

Nixon may have been paranoid, but that doesn't mean the Red Communists weren't out to get the USA. If they had succeeded, Canada would have been a sitting duck and you would have grown up saluting statues of Lenin. Does that sound crazy? Only because the Red Communists failed.

No one (at least I don't think anyone) doubts the basic badness of the Soviets and their system. But no one should doubt, either, that they felt we were out to get them. Nor should anyone doubt the horrors caused by the United States blaming everything that we didn't like in the world on the Soviets. There was plenty to blame them for without lying about it. The garrison state in Guatemala, the Hollywood blacklist and other aspects of McCarthyism, and millions of dead in southeast Asia (to name 3 things) should not have happened. We caused those things, not the Soviets.


They were a brutal bunch, Lenin, Stalin and their cronies and successors. But we also behaved brutally. I believe you are saying that the ends justified the means. But some of the ends were reprehensible and were intended to be reprehensible. We became far too much like our enemy, something that was predicted by many observors at the start of the Cold War (Walter Lippman and George Kennan, to name two who were not on the left).

Nice to see that you don't believe in the Constitution of The United States. i always thought you were a fascist.