Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Since Eisenhower, the only Republican presidents to not commit clearly impeachable offenses are Ford, a 2-year nonentity of a president, and Bush Jr., who is still a bottom 5 president of all time. That most media outlets still refuse to cover the Republican Party in those specific terms is proof positive that they are still, 60-odd years on, not able to deal with the actuality of the conservative movement. Reagan was mentally impaired but still popular? So the fuck what? The public deserved to know that he had sold weapons to the Iranians in contravention of a ban that he had personally imposed so that he could fund right-wing death squads in Nicaragua, again in contravention of US law. Impeaching Reagan might embolden the Russians? So the fuck what? We had begun impeachment against a president who wasn't mentally impaired a decade prior for lesser crimes without serious repercussions in the Cold War.

"Even if these arguments weren't obvious at the time (and they were), the fact that we allowed Reagan to get away with it directly resulted in the competitive Reagan idolatry that has dominated the Republicans since at least the mid-90s to the devastating results best seen in the Iraq War but also encompassing the consistent Republican embrace of corruption and the consistent Republican repudiation of anything approaching science or even response to evidence. Every single Republican pathology seen today has its roots in our failure to fully prosecute Iran-Contra. In my reckoning, it ranks there with only the Iraq War in terms of our country's biggest geostrategic blunders in history, both clearly ahead of Vietnam. That the media and Democratic Party of the 80s decided it was best to just let the shithead get away with it is entirely inexcusable on the merits. Every justification thereof I have yet seen is at best pathetic, and far more often actively dishonest."

-- Hummus5989, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, comments [thanks to realinterrobang for quoting this earlier]