A riddle. What is the difference between Bob Woodward and LeftOfYou? LeftOfYou actually remembers Watergate. I was a Naval officer, on a warship, in a combat ready assignment, serving overseas. I felt like what was happening to my Commander-in-Chief, Richard Nixon, was of some personal importance to me. I paid close attention. Later, I read books about it, including Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's. I remember Watergate, in detail. Recent evidence suggests that Bob Woodward, who made his D.C. bones on Watergate, seemingly does not.
Our own Jed Lewison properly castigated famous Washington villager, Woodward, for the author and pundit's idiotic comparison of Watergate to Benghazi. Now even MSM voices have begun to call Woodward for BS on this one, albeit with velvet glove.
Come out into the tall grass to find out more and talk about it.
On Friday, the Christian Science Monitor's Washington Editor,Peter Grier, gave Bob Woodward's Benghazi rantings a complete airing and then ever so gently called BS.
Ever since Watergate, Bob Woodward has been dining out on on the historical scandal. Ever since Watergate, political scientist, Jonathan Bernstein has been studying the scandal. Grier's CSM editorial cites Bernstein's blog,A plain blog about politicss, to debunk Woodward's ridiculous rantings about Benghazi and Watergate.
So Bernstein debunks Woodward. Ha ha. That's rich. And does he ever! Using simple statements of uncontroversial historical facts about the Watergate crimes and cover-up, Bernstein utterly demolishes the very idea of meaningful similarities between the conduct of the Nixon Administration in connection with Watergate and the conduct of the Obama Administration in connection with Benghazi. He begins:
Obviously, things don't have to be as bad as Watergate to be important malfeasance, but given all the loose talk about "cover-up" and "worse than Watergate" in the context of Benghazi, I figured it was worth just pointing out quickly the general outlines of the Watergate cover-up.
* The cover-up was essentially directed by the president, overseen by the White House Chief of Staff, and at the operational level run by the White House Counsel.
* A false story was concocted.
* Both at the White House and at the campaign committee, everyone involved destroyed evidence.
Bernstein then recites six different blatantly criminal schemes carried out under the Watergate umbrella. He sums up:
The reason for the Watergate cover-up was that specific crimes had been committed, crimes which could have (had they been confessed to in June 1972) sent much of the senior White House staff, much of the campaign organization, and perhaps the President of the United States straight to prison.
The facts of Benghazi are invisible by comparison to Watergate and involve a totally different kind of conduct altogether at a much lower level of officialdom, for completely different reasons. So other than being completely different, in Woodward's distorted hindsight, Benghazi is just the same as Watergate. BS.
Thanks CSM, for saying so, if ever so gently.