Customer Reviews

Worse Than Watergate

5 star:		(74)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I teach criminal justice, so I was researching the Patriot Act and other civil rights violations under Bush II. The author makes a compelling argument that the Bush II administration has done things far worse that Watergate. The author makes the point that this is one of the most secretive presidency's in history.
The author makes the point when the American public becomes aware of all the dirty tricks and scandals of this administration become public knowledge, Nixon will look good by comparison.

(I have to confess as a life-long Republican, I liked many of the things Nixon did. For example, the first President to really address the crime problem in America.)

My students tell me I am being too critical and too hard on Lil Bush, but I think his father will go down in history as one of our best Presidents, and I voted for him, hoping he would be similar. So I confess by comparing him to his father I may be holding him to a much higher standard.

I have read many books on the Bush Administration, and this one and Al Frankins--Lies, Liars and the people who tell them are my favorites.

For a convicted felon, John Dean is an exceptional author. I remember reading his own recollections of the Watergate affair and his own association with the subsequent events that led both to his own denouement and the resignation of Richard Nixon in disgrace in "Blind Ambition" in the mid 1970s. Once again he weighs in impressively by building a very strong circumstantial case for the investigation and possible prosecution of President George W. Bush for criminal actions that Dean terms to be indeed, "worst than those of Watergate". Culling from public records and the recollections of other eye-witnesses, Dean shows how Mr. Bush has systematically exaggerated, embellished, and engineered a series of preverifications and outright lies to the American public in an effort to convince us of the need for military intervention in Iraq.

Dean argues that in asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American force in Iraq, President Bush made a number of "unequivocal public statements" regarding the reasons this country needed to pursue military force in pursuit of national interests. Dean, now an academic and noted author, shows how through tradition, presidential statements regarding issues of national security are held to an expectation of "the highest standard of truthfulness". Therefore, according to Dean, no president can simply "stretch, twist or distort" the facts of a case and then expect to avoid resulting consequences. Citing historical precedents, Dean shows how Lyndon Johnson's distortions regarding the truth about the war in Vietnam led to his own subsequent withdrawal for candidacy for re-election in 1968, and how Richard Nixon's attempted cover-up of the truth about Watergate forced his own resignation.

Dean contends that while President Bush should indeed receive the benefit of the doubt, he must also be held accountable for explaining how it is that he made such a string of unambiguous and confident pronouncements to the American people (and to the world as well) regarding the existence of WMD, none of which have been substantiated in the subsequent searches that have been conducted by either Untied Nations nor American Military investigators. Dean explains how the vetting process for any public staement is processed within the executive branch.

[...] Moreover, Dean contends, others such as Donald Rumsfeld were even more emphatic in claiming Saddam Hussein had WMD, even claiming to know the locations as being in the Tikrit and Baghdad areas. Finally, he concludes, given the huge implicit political risk to Mr. Bush, it would inconceivable that Mr. Bush would be so brazen as to make such statements without some intelligence to back them up.

Yet, according to Mr. Dean, we are left with a dilemma; either Mr. Bush's statements are grossly inaccurate, given the tons and tons of chemical agents he claimed Saddam possessed which can be neither located nor substantiated, or Mr. Bush has deliberately misled us. How do we reconcile what seem to be quite unequivocal statements from both the President and his agents and the evidence to date regarding the existence of WMD? According to Mr. Dean, there are two possibilities; first, that there is something devilishly wrong with the current administration's national security operations, a prospect Dean finds hard to swallow, or, second, the President has deliberately misled the American people and the world regarding the evidence supporting taking preemptive military action against the sovereign nation of Iraq.

Bluntly stated, if Mr. Bush led this country into war based on bogus intelligence data, he is liable under the Constitution for manipulation and deliberate misuse of that data under the "high crimes" statute of that document, given the fact it is a felony to defraud the United States through such a conspiratorial action. According to Mr. Dean, It is time for both Congress and the American people to demand of Mr. Bush the same kind of high-minded honesty he pledged to us under the oath of office. This is an important book, and one I urge you to read!

1. If any of the revelations presented in this book about the workings of the government's executive branch shock/amaze/stun/astonish you, then you are truly naive and apparently have spent the previous decades snoozing peacefully with Rip Van Winkle in the caves.

2. Ditto for the author, who must have been using a barbituate drip tube for the same amount of time...Iran-Contra (mid-level employees launching an undeclared war against a foreign government in the basement of the White House), nation building efforts that were rarely subject to extensive debate (Somalia, Haita, Kosovo, etc.), the expansion of the national security state (again, without much serious attention or opposition). Where was John Dean during all of these events? More Sominex, anyone?

George Bush and Dick Cheney don't talk to many people, and run a secretive operation on many fronts...which exactly mirrors the role of Hillary, John Sununu (Bush I), and Don Regan...mmmmmmm...could this be the arrogance of power?

And will any other current candidate operate any differently?

Worse than Watergate has to be the best expose of the Bush Administration that I've read. And Worse than Watergate is written by an insider in what had previously been the most corrupt administration in this country's history. Dean was a Republican (although he's given up politics) with no reason to bash Bush.

And, to be clear, the purpose of Dean's book is not to bash Bush, but rather to try to warn Bush and the American people what a dangerous road the Bush administration is on. And by drawing parallels to the Nixon administration, he warns of what is likely to happen if Bush is elected for a second term.

In Worse that Watergate, Dean walks us through the secrecy, double dealings and hidden agendas of the Bush Administration. As I mentioned, he then extrapolates those behaviors into likely scenarios for Bush's second term - if he is elected. Next, Dean provides a list of eleven scandals likely to emerge from the Bush administration in the coming years. Finally, Dean disects Bush's argument for going to war in Iraq, listing each lie and exaggeration.

This book is meticulously researched, with hundreds of footnotes citing primary sorces. This is a great resource for anyone who wants to become better educated on the Bush presidency and make an informed choice in November.

This book will scare you. After reading this book I understood that some of my worst fears about the Bush administration were completely true. ANd that the truth was worse than my fears.

Now, if we could only figure out how to get Bush's supporters to read this book and understand the truth!

John Dean is an interesting guy. He certainly found himself on the wrong side of the Watergate scandal. This has advantages and disadvantages for the man writing a book on the secretive behavior of the Bush administration. On the one hand, I think Dean wants to vindicate himself, to convince the world that he never did anything all that bad -- that the Nixon administration was really just a little horsing around compared to the REAL bad guys in the Bush administration. The sins of Bush are not, however, an excuse to dismiss the crimes of Nixon.

On the other hand, Dean is a VERY qualified author on the subject. He knows the ins and outs of how the government communicates with the public and the media, and documents in considerable detail a major policy reversal that has occurred under the Bush administration. In the five presidencies since Watergate (Ford through Clinton), the consistent, bipartisan trend was for more and more government information to become available to the public (starting with the strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act in 1974, and including recent executive orders on the systematic declassification of government documents). Under the Bush II administration, this trend has been sharply reversed, and the administration generally disseminates information only on a "need to know" basis. Most concretely, this has meant that requests by journalists, lawyers, NGOs, and other individuals and organizations for public information, such as the workings of the EPA and other government agencies, are simply ignored, and the public is kept in the dark. (This trend is also documented in other books, such as the recent book "Strategic Ignorance," by Carl Pope, on Bush environmental policy.) The government also stonewalls on clearly public-interest information like the composition of Cheney's energy task force. This is a deeply disturbing reversal in policy and deeply threatens the core relationship between the executive branch of government and both the rest of the government and the public itself. John Dean is the man to document and critique this reversal, and he has written a book worth reading.

John Dean's book, "Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," first and foremost is written by a man who, having served as Counsel to the President in the Nixon White House, should know about this sort of thing. And, if even half of what Dean has to say here regarding this Administration's obsessive secrecy and right-wing extremism is true, then the Bush/Cheney "co-presidency" (as Dean describes it) is not just misguided but a serious menace to our nation's democracy and security. Indeed, if the charges Dean levels against Bush and Cheney are correct, they amount to nothing less than a case for the removal from office and possible criminal prosecution of both men. Certainly, other Presidents before Bush and Cheney have abused power, tortured the Constitution, and trampled on Americans' liberties, but Bush and Cheney are arguably the most dangerous ever because, in today's America, the careful system of checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers is in tatters, leaving few if any constraints on their power in a post-9/11 world of (apparently) permanent war. Finally, in "Worse than Watergate," Dean argues persuasively that the combination of Bush's tough guy/"bring it on!" attitude abroad and his assault on democracy and freedom at home "actually plays into the hands of terrorists," allowing them to make "remarkable strides" and ultimately lead to our defeat. This is scary stuff, if true.

The question is, then, how true are the charges that Dean lays out in "Worse than Watergate," and are they as serious as he makes out? Ultimately, this comes down to the author's credibility and, more importantly, to the evidence that he presents in support of his arguments. In this reviewer's opinion, Dean is very strong on both counts. As far as Dean's credibility is concerned, no doubt Bush/Cheney defenders will argue that Dean has none. In making this argument, they undoubtedly will cite Dean's conviction on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and to defraud the government, as well as the four months he served in prison for his crimes in relation to the Watergate scandal. They also undoubtedly will charge that Dean betrayed President Nixon by cooperating with prosecutors in revealing evidence of top-level White House involvement in the Watergate break-in, the existence of a Nixon "enemies list," etc. However, what they probably will NOT point out is that Dean's actions in 1974 were courageous, even heroic, in that they exposed -- at significant risk to himself --what Dean at the time (correctly) called "a cancer on the presidency." Although the Nixon White House slandered Dean and claimed he was a liar, what he said turned out to be true, and the "cancer" was excised just in the nick of time. Whatever his other faults, Dean's actions in 1974 were central to exposing the crimes of Richard Nixon and possibly even to saving our democratic system of government. In this reviewer's opinion, a person willing to stand up against the President of the United States has a great deal of credibility going for him. In addition, Dean is certainly knowledgeable about Presidential abuse of power, having seen it from the inside, and if nothing else this also gives him credibility to speak on the subject.

As far as Dean's arguments are concerned, my feeling is that there is a great deal of powerful, documented evidence presented here to back them up. The core of Dean's charges center on the following: 1) Bush's serious character issues, of which there are many, and his slimy prior business dealings, compared to which the actions of Martha Stewart pale in comparison; 2) Bush's obsessive secrecy, both as Governor of Texas and as President of the United States, and his desire to "free the presidency from all restraints" on its power; 3) Bush's misleading of Congress in order to lead the country to war in Iraq (an impeachable offense, in Dean's opinion); 4) the White House's possibly criminal leaking of a covert CIA agent's name in retaliation for her husband's refutation of Bush's claims regarding (supposed) Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger; 5) Cheney's failure to provide truthful and complete medical information about himself; 6) Cheney's past business (mis)conduct related to Halliburton; and 7) Cheney's (mis)conduct as Vice President, including his refusal to provide Congress's General Accounting Office with information regarding the National Energy Policy Development Group he headed.

These are all extremely serious matters, and Dean provides a great deal of evidence and documentation to back them up. Dean is also far from the only one who has raised these issues, as most everyone who has looked seriously at Bush and Cheney have uncovered some seriously unsavory material. In the end, the only remaining question is what to do about the situation. Given Republican control of Congress, Dean points out that there is essentially no chance of impeachment, or even a serious investigation by an independent counsel, at the present time. Therefore, Dean concludes that the only hope is this year's election, in which the choice is obvious: another mandate for Bush/Cheney to pursue their demolition of Democracy; or an 180-degree change of course before it's too late. It is obvious that Dean strongly prefers the latter option, as should all patriotic, freedom-loving Americans. Dean's warnings can, of course, be dismissed, but only at great peril to our nation.

If you have a brain, check this book out of your local library. Then, with the money you would have spent on this book, donate it to the candidate of your choice, local state or national office.
My local library's director is a strong republican supporter. Her board is mostly "moral" people which means white, conservative, "christian", right wing losers. It is a fight to get her to put in anything critical of Bush in her collection, however there's still six volumes or so prominantly displayed about Clinton getting a BJ. Good for Clinton! They can't let go of it. These immoral minorities are now on your local school board, library board, local and state offices. They are the support network for the higher ups. You want to stop anyone? Knock their underpinnings out!

Where are the hard facts? I am a research nut and read everything, and still have yet to find facts supporting these kinds of conspircy theories. One thing that writers don't say, because it doesnt seem to sell books, is that the enemy of America, and I mean ALL Americans including the socialists, liberals, moderates, conservatives, and those with no political affiliations, is the many fundalmentalist Islamic groups and NOT President Bush. The enemy of America is not Bush, Clinton, Kerry, or Cheney, it is Al Quida and other Islamic extremists who did not care how many children or muslims or liberals were in the WTC on 9/11. and here is a secret: They are still out there, they are still gunning for YOU. So turn your hate away from American politians that you disagree with, and vote for who you do agree with, and hopefully you will vote for a President that will make the defense of America his primary concern. And don't turn to the United Nations, there is so much blatent corruption involved in the politics there that even Reader's Digest was able to gather enough cold hard facts to prove that point.

I found the book informative, well written, and further corroboration of what we all know: Bush/Cheney are out and out crooks (and both convicted criminals). I felt this book no more biased than Dean's other tomes (such as his excellent Rehnquist book.

As for those who give it one star and trash it, it is obvious they didn't read the book, so have no credibility in reviewing it. Similar posts are made to usenet by neocons who didn't see Michael Moore's stunning F 9/11, but feel thay have the knowledge to judge it.

I hope enough Amricans realize just how bad this guy is and boot him out of the White House, as he clearly deserves.

How much water is needed to make it worse than the infidious " water gate " is my question for you my estiemmed readears. I' ll post another review after I' ve read this book. But the pages are quality paper and it has that new book glué smell so I' m very excited. How better could worse be ? This may just be the question regarding this book !!!