Worse than Nixon

John W. Dean served as White House counsel to President Richard M. Nixon. He is the man who had the unpleasant duty of goint to the president and telling him that there was "a cancer on the presidency". Dean went into witness protection after testifying against President Nixon during the Watergate hearings. John Dean knows White House corruption and secrecy from the perspective of an insider. his recent book Worse than Watergate focuses his insights on the current administration of George W. Bush.

Dean's insight is stunning and his arguments are convincing. The Bush-Cheney co-presidency, as he calls it, has taken secrecy and deception to levels the Nixon White House never dreamed of. To paraphrase Dean, Bush and Cheney dissemble about their dissembling and stonewall about their stonewalling. Dean points out that a primary defense of the administration's secrecy is to protect the president's "deliberative process," that the president will not receive frank and open advice if that advice and the people wo give it are made public (ie., the continuing secrecy behind VP Cheney's Energy Task Force in 2001). Dean refutes this easily, saying that any person who gives advice to the President and does not want it made public and you have found a person who is giving advice that is not in the best interest of the American public.

Dean presents the best explanation I have read regarding the Congressional resolution autorizing the use of force in Iraq. It was, according to Dean's analysis, a complete shell game, and a blatant attempt to manipulate the Congress.

Basically, it goes like this. In the original resolution, there are some 20+ "whereas" clauses that introduce the bill. As an introduction to the bill (and subsequently, the law passed by
Congress), these whereas clauses do little more than provide context and offer a set of conditions under which the law may be enforced.

Some of them clauses describe issues that are generally agreed upon, like the fact that Saddam Hussein had a history of using chemical and biological weapons on his neighbors and his own people. Others of the wheras clauses are far more speculative, regarding a nuclear weapons program or connections to Al-Qaeda.

As a matter of law, Dean explains, these whereas clauses don't mean a whole lot, so Congress passed the resolution with the stipulation that the President would report back to the Congress before taking any military action. To satisfy the Congresional stipulations for the use of military force, President Bush was required report that he had determined the following:

1. That Iraq was indeed developing WMD.

2. That military action against Iraq was integral to the war against Al-Qaeda.

Just days before the first strikes in Iraq, the president issued his report to Congress. In it, he basically re-stated the text of the whereas clauses from the Congressional resolution, In effect, the White House used the fact that Congress had passed this resolution with it's introductory clauses as the basis for his determination that Iraq had WMD and was in league with Al-Qaeda.

Let me put this more simply. The President was basically saying, since the Congress "agreed" with these assumptions (the whereas clauses) by voting for the resolution, they must be true.

Worse Than Watergae is a must-read for progressives and conservatives who are fed up with the deception, dissembling and stonewalling of this administration. As a former Nixon insider, there are few people as qualified as John Dean when it comes to penetrating analysis of a scretive and corrupt presidency.