[tag]Carl Bernstein[/tag], who has a little experience with White House scandals, has written a hard-hitting piece for Vanity Fair calling for bipartisan hearings investigating the [tag]Bush[/tag] presidency. Which controversy does Bernstein believe requires a congressional investigation? Well, he appears to prefer casting a relatively wide net. (thank to reader M.M. for the tip)
[I]t is essential that the Senate vote — hopefully before the November elections, and with overwhelming support from both parties — to undertake a full investigation of the conduct of the presidency of George W. Bush, along the lines of the Senate [tag]Watergate[/tag] Committee’s [tag]investigation[/tag] during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
How much evidence is there to justify such action? Certainly enough to form a consensus around a national imperative: to learn what this president and his vice president knew and when they knew it; to determine what the Bush administration has done under the guise of national security; and to find out who did what, whether legal or illegal, unconstitutional or merely under the wire, in ignorance or incompetence or with good reason, while the administration barricaded itself behind the most Draconian secrecy and disingenuous information policies of the modern presidential era.
[tag]Bernstein[/tag] said calls for impeachment are “premature,” but seems to believe the Bush gang makes Nixon look innocent.
The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy — used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.
As if we needed another Bush-[tag]Nixon[/tag] parallel, Bernstein wasn’t subtle. As he concluded the piece, “There was understandable reluctance in the Congress to begin a serious investigation of the Nixon presidency. Then there came a time when it was unavoidable. That time in the Bush presidency has arrived.”