by William Skink

It’s truly amazing to see US state media bestow sainthood on George H.W. Bush. If you watch or read US state media, you may be tempted to think this loving family man from the GREATEST generation is now plucking a divine harp in heaven. Aided by Trump derangement syndrome, any blemish on Bush Senior’s legacy will be dutifully expunged in order to mythologize this deceitful operator of US imperial ambition.

The supreme irony is Pappy Bush actually did what Trump has only so far threatened to do–use the power of the presidential pardon to obstruct justice and protect his own ass. Bush avoided being directly implicated in the Iran/Contra scandal by pardoning 6 people on the eve of the trial. from The Intercept:

The Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States traded missiles for Americans hostages in Iran, and used the proceeds of those arms sales to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua, did much to undermine the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Yet his vice president’s involvement in that controversial affair has garnered far less attention. “The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete,” wrote Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh, a former deputy attorney general in the Eisenhower administration, in his final report on the Iran-Contra affair in August 1993.

Why? Because Bush, who was “fully aware of the Iran arms sale,” according to the special counsel, failed to hand over a diary “containing contemporaneous notes relevant to Iran/contra” and refused to be interviewed in the later stages of the investigation. In the final days of his presidency, Bush even issued pardons to six defendants in the Iran-Contra affair, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger — on the eve of Weinberger’s trial for perjury and obstruction of justice. “The Weinberger pardon,” Walsh pointedly noted, “marked the first time a president ever pardoned someone in whose trial he might have been called as a witness, because the president was knowledgeable of factual events underlying the case.” An angry Walsh accused Bush of “misconduct” and helping to complete “the Iran-contra cover-up.”

For those who suffer from extreme cases of Trump derangement syndrome, there is no relevant history worth considering before the dire election results of 2016. But for those not stricken dumb by Trump hysteria, there is a lot that can be gleaned from previous presidential regimes.