Echo from Cape Cod Massachusettes ~ Watergate today

Same Old Watergate ~ echo opinion letter published in the Cape Cod Times, Massachusetts

Those of us who have been around since the 1970s, remember a little episode in our national psyche that rolled out just about 45 years ago. It was called Watergate and all the papers and broadcasters were into it full time. 

It was very big in its day and yet the nation survived.

Today we are faced with a situation so similar, it's almost spooky. The players are different, but the venue's the same.  The White House is again the setting, and its chief resident once again plays a central role.  (Donald Trump)....he dodges, he feints, he lies and covers up as the evidence against him mounts slowly, but irreversibly. There's a continuous drip, drip, drip as one lie follows another and the guilt piles up and the current White House resident, like the one 45 years ago, makes one outrageous denial after another.

Haldeman and Erlichman are gone, replaced by Kelly Anne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But they are, at best, minor players. Instead, the heavy today, as then, is the president. Nixon was never impeached because he resigned in disgrace before that could happen. Will Donald Trump beat this sentence and leave under his own power?

Bob Mendes, Mashpee MA

FBI director was fired just because you can: But to hire is not so easy

Rose Mary Woods was a secretary and gatekeeper to President Richard Nixon. She made a "horrible mistake" by accidentally erasing 18 plus minutes of President Nixon's recorded conversations with his aide Halderman. Now, Donald Trump is also alluding to having oval office tape recordings. Obviously, Donald Trump has learned nothing from the mistakes of the past. Who knew? Perhaps the ghost of Mrs. Woods (1917-2005) is still lurking to help him out?

There's an old vaudeville joke about how easy it is to die.  

"Dying is easy.  Comedy is hard!"

In fact, firing an FBI director, like Donald Trump did when he embarrassed James Comey with his rude and unprofessional dismissal of a competent leader, was the easy part of the equation.  Now, hiring somebody to replace James Comey will be much more difficult.

Donald Trump must learn what it's like to be public humilated for the way he dismissed FBI Director James Comey. Now, the FBI director is in a position to return the humiliation. He has requested to be interviewed by the Congressional committees that oversee his former jurisdiction but to do so in public. In response, Donald Trump has threatened to release audio tapes of their communications. It's a laughable response. Indeed, if Donald Trump has audio tapes recorded from his conversations with James Comey, as he inferes through veiled Twitter threats, then these are subject to subpoena. Brng them all on just like Watergate. (Where is Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods when Trump might need her secretarial transcription services? Unfortunately, the lady died in 2005, in Ohio. God Rest Her Soul.)

Firing the FBI director James Comey was easy.  Humiliating him was despicable.  But, hiring somebody to replace him will be difficult to do.

So far, the list of potential candidates looks bleak, in my opinion. None of the cafeteria plan presented to the press as possible replacements is of the stature of James Comey.

The Trump administration is looking to fill the job, which requires Senate confirmation, after Trump abruptly fired Director James Comey on Tuesday.

Time Magazine 

Reported that the first candidate to arrive was Alice Fisher, a high-ranking Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration. She left after about an hour and a half inside the building and declined to comment to reporters.

Although I have no tremendous liking or dislike for James Comey, I have always respected his position at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Therefore, I pray he will use his credible stature to bring light to an otherwise dismal series of circumstances that eventually led to his abrupt dismissal.

War and Republicans

Two American Republican presidents are responsible for the senseless loss of American military lives, plus countless civilian deaths due to the wars in Viet Nam and Iraq.

The following is startling Viet Nam War information, recently reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), subsequently broadcast by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and now an article in the March 29, 2013, "The Week":

"Nixonian guile:  Newly declassified tapes of President Lyndon B. Johnson's White House telephone conversations confirm that Richard Nixon sabotaged Vietnam peace talks in October 1968 in order to strengthen his own presidential campaign.  In the recordings, Defense Secretary Clark Clifford tells Johnson that the FBI overheard a Nixon campaign adviser persuading the South Vietnamese government to withdraw from peace talks, promising them a better deal if they wait until Nixon is elected.  Hanoi was offering major concessions at the time, and a settlement would have allowed Johnson to stop bombing North Vietnam.  Knowing that this would derail his campaign, Nixon intervened.  Johnson accused Nixon of 'treason' but said nothing publicly for fear of revealing that the FBI was bugging South Vietnamese government figures. Nixon went on to escalate the war - at the expense of 22,000 more American lives---before signing a peace accord in 1973."  

To date, the names of 58, 272 Americans killed in the Viet Nam war are carved in the black granite of the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington DC.  This astounding number doesn't include the many thousands of Vietnamese casualties.

Fast forward 30 years to President George Bush II, who created a false premise for the American invasion of Iraq.  Americans were led to believe the shock and awe massive military invasion of Iraq was in response to the war on terrorism, retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US and because the dictator Saddam Hussein was harboring "weapons of mass destruction" (WOMD).  None of these premises were true, but we invaded Iraq, anyway.  Ten years post the invasion, Americans have lost at least 4,800 military in the Iraq war, plus tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives, as a result of ethnic violence.  

The above information is not opinion, but fact. Two Republican presidents put the hubris of politics ahead of peace and the well being of the American people.  Thousands of Americans are dead today because of Nixon's interference in the Viet Nam peace negotiation and President Bush lying about the WOMD in Iraq.

Of course, President Nixon and President Johnson are both dead.
Although President Bush is still alive, it's unlikely he will be held accountable for starting an illegal war.

Nevertheless, these two horrible war incidents will, justifiably, deter Americans from entering into any more wars without having specific and credible evidence of our national security being at risk.

But there are scary threats.  When it comes to WOMD, I don't know how much more evidence Americans need about North Korea, a nation practicing to attack either Japan or US military bases in Guam.  Likewise, Iran is obviously developing nuclear technology for the purpose of creating a frightening atomic bomb.  Although these threats put our national security at risk, it will be hard to defend against them without specific and highly credible evidence of an imminent attack.

Republican lies and sabotage about Viet Nam and the Iraq wars have created a terrible mistrust among Americans.  The illegal actions by Nixon and Bush II may put us in in even more dangerous situations, if any imminent threat is finally  acted upon by our enemies in Korea or Iran.  

Therefore, President Nixon and President Bush probably created severe American national security problems, by lying.