Trump's Attorney General Nominee Helped Bush Sr. Get Away With Murder
truthout.org / William Rivers Pitt / December 12, 2018
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What a piece of work is this guy. (William) Barr was assistant attorney general, and then attorney general, during the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush (who at last report remains dead despite his ongoing appearances in the news cycle). The most noteworthy line item on Barr’s résumé is his decision to officially recommend pardons for six of the top scoundrels — Caspar Weinberger, Robert McFarlane, Elliot Abrams, Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers and Clair George — in the Iran-Contra “scandal.”
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“Scandal,” they call it. Sometimes it’s the “Iran-Contra affair,” as if Oliver North were cheating on Daniel Ortega behind the Shah’s back. In point of fact, it was a felony festival in which missiles and other war weapons were sold to Iran to pay for the slaughter of civilians, nuns and schoolteachers in Central America. It was a genuinely murderous piece of business, and H.W. Bush was in it up to his knobby little patrician chin. The pardoning of those six men guaranteed that Bush Sr. would die comfortably in his own bed, and Barr did his part to make sure that escape from justice was seamless.
Dick Cheney’s belief that the executive branch is beyond the rule of law began during his time as a staffer to Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon White House, but those beliefs grew fangs and claws during the Iran-Contra investigations. The same, as it turns out, can be said for Barr, who journalist Jeremy Scahill describes as a “fanatic who believes in a dictatorship of executive power.”
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Barr would be a terrible nominee even without his Iran-Contra unitary executive baggage, because he brings to the table everything that made Jeff Sessions a terrifying attorney general. Barr, like Sessions, is a merciless regressive on the topics of mass incarceration and mandatory minimum sentencing. He does not believe in abortion rights, even in the case of rape, and has actively opposed providing equal rights to the LGBTQ+ community for decades.
FULL OP-ED: https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-attorney-general-nominee-helped-bush-sr-get-away-with-murder/
“It’s hard to imagine an Attorney General as bad as Jeff Sessions when it comes to criminal justice and the drug war, but Trump seems to have found one. Nominating Barr totally undermines Trump’s recent endorsement of sentencing reform.
“The vast majority of Americans believe the war on drugs needs to be replaced with a health-centered approach. It is critically important that the next Attorney General be committed to defending basic rights and moving away from failed drug war policies. William Barr is a disastrous choice.” http://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2018/12/president-trump-nominate-william-barr-attorney-general
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